


Sick Little Games

by capriciouslouis



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-28
Updated: 2013-04-28
Packaged: 2017-12-09 20:20:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 37,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/777606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capriciouslouis/pseuds/capriciouslouis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry and Louis like playing games. And the game they’re playing at the moment has only two rules.</p>
<p>Harry lies.</p>
<p>Louis cheats.</p>
<p>The more it hurts, the better you’re playing. This is a contest to see who can take the most pain. Things get rough; people get hurt. This game is not for the fainthearted. And both of them want to win.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It’s all Liam’s fault.

He starts it off by pointing out Harry at the party. Louis doesn’t usually like parties because he always wakes up with a headache the day after, but he’s quite enjoying this one. People are shoving free drink after free drink in his hand, in exchange for a quick flirt, a short exchange of banter, the odd cheeky snog in a corner. Louis is in his element. His head is buzzing pleasantly, he isn’t thinking straight, and here is a room full of strangers to play with. This is the kind of game Louis likes to play; the kind he knows he can win. Sometimes he misses having a challenge, but he doesn’t really mind. After all, he wins every time, and who could complain about that?

“That’s Harry Styles,” Liam says, pointing across the room. “He’s your kind of guy.”

“Oh?” Louis asks, leaning against the table. “And what exactly  _is_ my kind of guy?” He swirls the alcohol around in his glass and a little bronze liquid spills down his wrist, trickling down inside his sleeve. He grins a little bit, just to show Liam that he’s in a tolerant mood. He isn’t always.

Shaking his head, Liam continues, “He’s wild, and weird, and he messes people about. You could do with someone like that; it’s about time you met your match.”

“You reckon that guy could take me?” Louis asks sceptically.

Harry Styles is one of those guys who everybody goes crazy for, one of those effortlessly attractive people who sends everybody in the room weak at the knees and dizzy with longing. He looks like he knows it, too; as he appraises the crowd, his expression is smug. Anyone he wants is his, and he looks like he intends to abuse that power. His hair is a mess of curls and waves that gathers in a whirlpool on his forehead and hides his ears, and it wisps down towards his collar looking soft as anything. It’s the colour of melted chocolate, glinting with toffee-gold when he tilts his head and it catches the light, and Louis secretly wants to touch it. He’s almost certainly not the only one. Harry has the kind of confident, self-assured smile that most celebrities have when they’ve been performing for a couple of years, and his teeth are perfect; a dentist would probably pay him to be a model for toothpaste or mouthwash. His mouth is unusually large, and it makes Louis smirk to think about exactly what use those velvet lips could be put to. As he downs a shot, he stretches his body, and his orange jumper rides up to show exactly how low slung his jeans are; they look ready to slide off his hips, and are almost indecently tight, but somehow simultaneously loose enough to leave you curious about what else he’s hiding inside his boxers. He has a flawless backside, though, and Louis stares at it for a little while, letting his eyes linger. Is it obvious that he finds the boy attractive? Hopefully not; that would make things too easy. Harry’s arms and legs are long and he has very big hands and feet, another little detail which makes a grin flare up on Louis’ face. His lips are swollen, like he’s been kissing a lot of people – like Louis has. He’s too far away to make out what colour his eyes are, but Louis can tell that he’ll be an expert at using them. Eyes are a very important tool when it comes to manipulating people, and Harry looks like he’s good at that.

“I don’t know,” Liam admits, “but you could certainly take him, and that’s all you usually need before you go in for the kill.”

“Ooooh, you make me sound so…” Louis waves a hand airily. Words are inadequate, and he’s drunk, so he can’t think of any. Certainly not any sophisticated ones.

“Despicable?” Liam suggests.

Draining his drink in one swift gulp, Louis wipes his mouth almost lazily with the back of his hand, swiping the droplets away. Then he licks his knuckles to take the last remnants of the alcohol, a movement which make Liam wince in disgust. He’s somewhat of a perfectionist when it comes to hygiene; borderline obsessive-compulsive, and he finds Louis revolting at best. This is most definitely  _not_ Louis’ best.

“Well, we’ll have to see, won’t we?” Louis almost taunts, his voice taking on a typical teasing lilt, pitching oddly because he’s intoxicated and giddy, and excited – none of which are a very good combination. Slamming his glass down on the table so hard that he almost breaks it, he raises an eyebrow, checking Harry out one last time, then pushes off the corner of the table and starts sauntering across the room with his best nonchalant expression, which he can’t hold because he keeps wanting to laugh, and it’s hard enough to keep a straight face when he’s sober.

He approaches Harry with confidence, barely stopping to consider whether or not Harry plays for his team. It hardly matters anyway. Louis knows an awful lot of people, and he’s almost certain that someone will step in if Harry gets nasty. As he heads over, he sees Harry look up and a smirk creeps across his face as he watches Louis cross the room and head towards him. Louis feels an irrational urge to wipe that cocky smile off the boy’s face and he thinks he knows just how to do it.

When he reaches Harry, the first thing the boy does is to put one hand on his hip – sassy, Louis notes – and open his mouth, probably about to say something sarcastic. That’s optimistic; like Louis is going to give him the chance to speak. Before Harry can say anything, Louis crosses the short distance between them with a little drunken lurch (those flimsy little pink cocktails were stronger than he’d given them credit for) and then slams his hands onto Harry’s chest, shoving him hard, then quickly leans forward and captures Harry’s mouth with his lips, going in for a real messy kiss, one that involves tangling tongues and swiftly moving lips and fierce gasps – a harsh, intimate kiss that belongs in a darkened bedroom and not at a party, where people can see. His intention is to shock Harry, and it works; a choked noise rips out of Harry’s throat as the force of Louis’ lunge sends them both falling backwards.

The floor is hard when Harry slams into it, flat on his  back with a horrible crunch of shoulder-blades, and the impact knocks all the breath out of him. Without tearing himself away to ask if he’s hurt, Louis finds that breath being exhaled sharply into his own mouth, and he inhales it quickly, then breathes it back out again in a quick huff, blowing the air back into Harry’s lungs. Their lips are still fastened together, and Harry is so surprised at having his own air being breathed back into him that he doesn’t struggle for the first few seconds. Only once he’s realized what’s happening, he isn’t surrendering without a fight. Louis revels in the sensation as Harry recovers himself and his tongue begins invasively probing the inside of Louis’ mouth, trying to gain dominance. In return, Louis explores Harry’s mouth with equal intensity, and he almost laughs because the battle has only just begun and already he’s having to fight, which means that this is a challenge, which means that he’s enjoying it more than he’s enjoyed anything for years. A laugh bubbles on his tongue before he can stop it, and he giggles tipsily into Harry’s mouth.

Outraged at being laughed at mid-snog, Harry places his hands on Louis’ shoulders and hauls him closer, pressing their bodies together. Suddenly it isn’t funny anymore, and Louis growls as he tangles his hands in Harry’s curly hair, which pleasingly feels just as silky and soft sliding between his fingers as he’d hoped it would. A small, helpless gasp teaches him that he’s found Harry’s weak spot, and he almost vindictively massages the other boy’s scalp with his fingertips, feeling Harry wriggle underneath him and mewl weak protests into his mouth, because he’s enjoying it so much that he can’t make himself concentrate on the battle, which he is now losing. Louis is smug. Once again, he is victorious, and it feels good.

Tearing his mouth away, Harry fights for access to Louis’ neck and his lips start wandering along the smooth, tanned column of Louis’ jugular. Whining, Louis thrashes around and tries to throw him off because Harry wasn’t supposed to find  _his_ weakness, that isn’t how it works, but it feels too good, the heat of a mouth nibbling his neck and sucking little marks onto the underside of his jaw, tiny kisses that claw a moan out of Louis’ throat before he can swallow it and force it back down. It’s Harry’s turn to laugh; a deep, sensual chuckle that makes Louis want to collapse helplessly into his embrace. How can such a simple sound be so enthralling, so sexy? It’s the kind of noise that gives definition to the word ‘attractive’, and turns Louis’ stomach into a master gymnast as it does little back-flips in response. Within his veins, his blood is churning.

A pleased purr rumbles from Harry’s chest and he takes another bite out of Louis’ neck, leaving a large purpling blotch in the sensitive place where Louis’ neck and shoulders meet, which is just unfair, because not only will a mark like that be impossible to hide, and earn him awkward questions the next time his mum sees him, but it feels far too nice and causes a sudden rush of blood to that particular spot that knocks Louis off balance. He throws back his head without thinking to give Harry better access, and that of course delights Harry endlessly.

Determined not to lose, Louis arches his neck and Harry continues where he is, believing that Louis has given in – but Louis is cleverer than that, and the moment Harry buries his face even closer into his warm skin, he takes two handfuls of curls and fights back, tugging at the roots of Harry’s curls and making him hiss. As soon as Harry’s mouth has detached with a wet squelch from his jaw, Louis takes command of the situation once again by assailing the other boy with a kiss designed to unsettle him, a wild and untidy attempt to overwhelm Harry with passion. It only half works, because by the time Harry has succumbed with a low moan that trails off into a sigh, Louis himself has forgotten what he was meant to be doing and the kiss becomes an explosion of heat and wandering hands and little cries of pleasure that embarrass them both, but that just refuse to stay inside them. The floor is hard, and Harry’s hands are soft, so Louis concentrates on that. The music in the background is thudding, but he can’t recognize the song even though he’s almost certain that he knows it.

Harry isn’t as drunk as Louis, and at first he tastes like toothpaste, but Louis is nothing if not persistent. He himself has been drinking all night, and his tongue tastes like vodka and the glossy tinned cherries that were floating in his cocktails earlier, and he lets his teeth clash painfully with Harry’s as he relentlessly tries to contaminate Harry with those flavours. By the time they’ve been lying on the floor, almost  _lazily_  snogging each other’s faces off, for about ten minutes, Louis is pretty sure that if someone did a DNA test on their saliva, they would register as the same person, because they have been swapping saliva for so long that his mouth is beginning to taste of Harry. This is a sensation that he likes.

After not very much longer, his mouth starts to ache and his lips begin to feel sore, because he wasn’t made for such a relentless onslaught of snogging, but Harry shows no sign of wanting to stop, and Louis isn’t going to be the first to break away. He runs clumsy fingers through Harry’s hair, and it tangles thickly around his hands, locking his fingers in place. In response, Harry lightly traces a line down his back, and then suddenly both of his hands are inside Louis’ shirt, and he’s grabbing handfuls of skin like he needs something to hold onto. Maybe he does. It helps Louis, anyway.

Harry’s fingers leave his back, and Louis half expects them to travel downwards and start slipping inside his trousers, which would definitely be adventurous seeing as Louis is pretty uncontrollable right now, his thoughts are an incoherent jumble of drunkenness and lust, and if Harry starts the removal of clothes then he won’t be able to stop, and he’s never had sex with an audience before – but then Harry shoves him off, and Louis rolls, and then Harry is getting to his feet.

He’s breathless and he’s beautiful, with his hair sticking up and his clothes wrinkled, his mouth red and bruised from the assault of Louis’ tongue relentlessly forcing its way in between them, and his eyes a little wild. Louis could taste that he was sober before they started, but he’s beginning to wonder if Harry has gotten drunk on simply the taste of the alcohol on Louis’ breath, because he seems to be quite shaky on his feet. It takes him a few seconds to get his breath back, and then he stares at Louis, who is still stunned and lying on the floor, because nobody has ever held their own against him so magnificently before, and it looks like Harry is still going strong, because he’s reaching down to grab Louis’ hand and haul him upwards.

“Care to introduce yourself?” Harry asks. He looks a little accusingly at Louis, who is amused because although he doesn’t know who Harry is, he knows his name, whereas Harry has no idea who he’s just been snogging for about twenty minutes. It’s an advantage, and Louis approves of advantages – when they’re in his favour, anyway.

Louis brings them back together with the hard sound of skin hitting skin, and then his fingers are roaming along Harry’s hips and dragging him closer as he presses their foreheads together and feverishly kisses him again. Their mouths are sore enough that the kiss is not heavy and hot as he would have preferred, but light and gentle, a quick caress of their lips before they tentatively spring apart. Louis does this a couple more times before he playfully shoves Harry back, and he feels his dark blue eyes lock onto Harry’s and stay there.

“I’m Louis,” he greets. One of his hands finds its way into his pocket, and the other one jerks upwards and gives an awkward little wave.

“Harry,” acknowledges Harry. Louis already knows what his name is, but Harry doesn’t know that. “Is there any reason why you just came up to me and pounced on me, Louis? Why did you pin me down like that?”

Louis shrugs and grins. “I fancied a snog?” He doesn’t know why it comes out like a question.

“Do you fancy another?” Harry offers suggestively. He trails his hand down Louis’ chest, and Louis catches him by the wrist just as those long fingers begin to toy with the fly of his jeans. Appearing unruffled by their encounter won’t work so well if Harry discovers just how much Louis is straining against his jeans.

Again, Louis gives him a shrug. “Might do.” He likes shrugging; shrugging is good. A shrug could mean anything. He likes to keep people guessing.

Reaching out, Harry pulls Louis’ hand out of his pocket and interlocks their fingers with the kind of casual confidence that seemingly only he can muster. Louis has only ever held hands before with people who are in his family, and it feels strange to have such long, warm fingers holding his. It’s quite nice, actually, not that he’d admit it.

“Shall we take this outside?” suggests Harry, and his warm, supple voice reminds Louis of warm fingers sliding down his back and tracing spirals on his spine.

“If you like,” Louis agrees a little too quickly, but he can’t take it back.

Harry doesn’t reply, but he tugs on Louis’ hand, and before all too long they are vanishing out of the back door. On their way out, Louis sees Liam staring at him, appalled, and he laughs at his expression. He doesn’t think Liam approves of snogging. There’s too much saliva involved; he probably doesn’t think it’s hygienic.

It’s a cool night, but Louis isn’t cold. Harry’s arms are around him, and Harry is like a giant hot water bottle; his skin is so hot that it almost burns. Louis doesn’t think he’s ever had someone hold him like this before, which is unusual, because he’s done a lot of things in his time.

“You’re a very strange guy, Louis,” Harry tells him.

Louis takes that as a compliment. “Thanks.”

They fall silent for a while. Louis knows he’ll regret this in the morning…but right now he just wants to do it all over again.


	2. Chapter 2

Louis had been completely right when he’d predicted that the next morning would be filled with fuzzy regrets and a heavy head that pounded with the slightest movement. He’s spent half of the morning guzzling whatever water he can lay his hands on without having to move too far from his very comfortable bed, and spent the other half throwing up. It’s the afternoon now, and after brushing his teeth seven times, he’s ventured daringly outside into the local park to soak up some sunshine and hopefully absorb some of the cheerfulness reflecting off everyone else who has the good fortune not to have been stricken down by a crippling hangover. So far, it isn’t working particularly well. Somehow, he’s staggered over to an empty bench and had to cling to it to stop the world from spinning, and after hanging grimly to a twisted metal frame covered in flaky green paint, watching everyone else enjoying themselves and having his ears and his headache assaulted by children, he’s contemplating whether it would be more satisfying to brutally murder them all and shut them up, or just to surgically remove his own ears so he can’t hear them. His mood is so foul that murder, to him, seems a far more appealing option.

The park is loud. To his aching head, it feels like it’s far louder than anything he’s ever heard, even when someone turned up the stereo to full blast at the party last night and then broke the volume control so that they were all being blasted with relentless and painful sound-waves for at least an hour. Louis usually doesn’t mind little kids; they make him laugh and are often way smarter than most adults he knows, but he wants to punch them all in the face right now because their shrieks feel like they’re tearing him apart from the inside out.

Louis feels like he loathes everyone just because they were sensible enough not to get drunk the night before, and that’s when he makes a firm resolution never to touch another drop of alcohol in his life again. Ever. He’s sure he can find some other substance to abuse so that he does ridiculous things, something with less repercussions – he’ll sniff glue or something.

He’s gloomily contemplating where he can buy himself some glue when as if to mock his recent decision, a large green bottle of something starts being waved enticingly underneath his nose, a boozy scent wafting up towards him and making him blink in surprise. Confused, he looks warily at the bottle and then stares at the pale fingers wrapped around it, wondering who could possibly be brandishing alcohol so temptingly in front of him when he has just decided to live a purely alcohol-free existence. Looking up, he finds himself nose to nose with a grinning curly haired boy whose features had previously blurred into a messy haze into the part of Louis’ brain that he had labelled ‘drunken sex experiences’, but it barely takes him a second to put a name to the face that he had pretty much forgotten, because Harry Styles still smells like cologne and sexiness and his hair still tickles softly where it touches Louis’ forehead, and Louis recalls scents and sensations far better than he remembers faces when he’s drunk. Also, one thing that he does remember is that stunning grin, and he’s never seen another person smile quite like that, especially not someone who, the night before, had also gotten extremely drunk.

“Hey,” Harry says brightly, “wassup?”

Louis grumpily shoves the bottle out of the way. “What do you want?”

“Someone got out of the wrong side of bed this morning,” Harry says innocently.

“Someone has a hangover,” Louis snaps, “now go away.” In his opinion, drunken fumbles should stay drunken fumbles. Never before has someone he snogged whilst intoxicated turned up so unexpectedly the next morning, almost as if they had followed him.

“Have a drink,” offers Harry, waving the bottle at him.

“What?” Is the boy completely stupid? Louis stares at him incredulously. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Best cure for a hangover: get more drunk than the night before,” Harry tells him cheerfully.

“I’m never touching another drop of alcohol again,” Louis retorts – then he catches a blast of alcohol fumes in Harry’s warm breath, and asks disgustedly, “are you drunk already?”

“Yep.” Unsteadily sitting down beside Louis, Harry cuddles up against him and contentedly rests his head on Louis’ shoulder like it is Louis’ sole purpose in life to be his human pillow. Whilst trying to get comfortable, he hiccups softly and follows it up with a giggle.

“You’re shameless. Do you do this a lot? Nobody else I know gets drunk so early in the day.”

Harry clumsily waves a long hand. “I try never to deal with serious matters with a clear head.”

“What ‘serious matters’?” Louis snorts.

“Working out how best to approach the hot guy I was making out with last night,” comes the instant reply, and Harry is deadly serious as he says it. There is no trace of that usual mischievous grin on his face, and Louis is instantly wary. “I get the feeling you do that a lot; chasing up random guys and snogging them unexpectedly. I do it, too. But weirdly, last night, it kind of felt like it meant something, and not just because I was less drunk than usual. I don’t usually make a habit of asking around to find out who people are, but you’re different to all the other guys. For starters, we didn’t fuck, which for me is definitely unusual.” Louis never thought he’d hear an expletive sound so beautiful, but Harry has the kind of voice that pours melted chocolate over every syllable that falls out of his mouth, and makes the simplest of phrases sound sensual enough to inspire a blush, so the harsh word sounds oddly sweet coming from him. Not to mention hot. Louis wants him to say it again – he wants to grab Harry and kiss him and bite down roughly on his lip, and drag his mouth out and slide his hands onto Harry’s hip and suck huge marks into the pale skin of his neck and make Harry moan every swearword in the dictionary. He wants to know how that sounds. Even the thought has him shifting uncomfortably at the tightening sensation towards the pit of his stomach.

“I don’t sleep around,” Louis begins, “I’m not that much of a slu – oh!”

Yes, he was indeed hinting that Harry was a slut, but the word has been interrupted on its way out and he can no longer remember how to say it, or how to say anything, for that matter, because one of Harry’s large hands has just found his thigh and is squeezing it, and Louis has lost his train of thought. Wildly trying to remember what he was saying, he wriggles, and an oddly smug expression flits across Harry’s face as his hand moves further up, and inwards, gliding towards areas of Louis’ body that he doesn’t usually allow strangers to touch. Oh, he’ll grope someone else’s crotch with the best of them, but his own is normally out of bounds. He’s strangely shy about that kind of thing.

“Don’t talk,” Harry murmurs. “We’ve talked enough.” Then he starts sliding further along the bench, twisting and pulling himself into Louis’ lap, and his mouth first creeps slyly along Louis’ bruised neck, finding the exact same spots he’s already marked, which of course are ten times as sensitive, and then locates Louis’ lips, and he tastes like some kind of sour alcohol that Louis doesn’t much like, which makes it easier to push him away even though he’s tempted to give in. It would feel painfully good to give in to the assaulting sensations piling on top of him, to allow Harry’s long body to press him into the bench and gasp into the younger boy’s mouth, to twine his fingers in handfuls of curls and forget everything, including his hangover – but Louis doesn’t really fancy being scolded for his displays of public sex by mothers with young and impressionable children, so he shoves Harry backwards with an admirable amount of restraint.

“What on earth are you playing at?” he demands breathlessly. “Not here! God and children are watching!”

Harry complains, “I preferred you when you were drunk,” then raises the bottle to his lips and takes a long swill of alcohol. Louis can’t help but be mesmerised by the shape of Harry’s perfect mouth curving around the neck of the bottle and watching with an obscene amount of fascination as Harry’s throat moves when he swallows. Yes, so Louis associates any sucking and swallowing motion with sex! He also gets inexplicably turned on by the sight of Harry licking droplets of alcohol off his lips. What can be done?

“If I’m perfectly honest, I preferred you when your lips were busy and you weren’t saying anything,” he admits, shaking his head disapprovingly.

Tilting his head onto one side, Harry bites one lip with so much allure that it shouldn’t be legal, and says flirtatiously, “Well, I’m sure that can be arranged. I have no objections.” With one last quick swig of alcohol, he crashes his lips against Louis’, and when Louis’ mouth falls open so he can let out a small cry of both protest and pleasure, he spits the vodka into Louis’ mouth.

It really ought to be disgusting, but Louis has never objected to alcohol before, and really, he finds it quite amusing that Harry is trying to get him drunk on second hand alcohol when the night before, that was exactly what he was trying to do to Harry. This seems so hilarious to him that he wants to laugh, and seeing as he doesn’t want alcohol spurting out of his nose and all over Harry, which usually happens when you try to laugh and drink something at the same time, he swallows it. An approving rumble greets him from Harry’s chest, and he loves the sound.

“Not here,” whines Louis.

“Give me one reason why here and now isn’t as good as any other place and time,” Harry murmurs, his lips persuasively soft as they flutter on Louis’ neck.

“Children,” Louis gasps, “and animals. Innocent eyes –”

“They’ll be corrupted one day anyway; might as well do it now.”

“Public nudity is illegal –”

“We’re not naked.” A grin flares on Harry’s face. “Unless you’d like us to be. It can easily be arranged…” His voice trails off silkily as he starts fiddling with the buttons on Louis’ shirt, which Louis is determined will remain firmly fastened.

Slapping his hand away, Louis orders, “Get off me right now or I’ll start screaming. I am not having sex on a park bench, that is beyond tacky. I’m not that easy, Styles. You’re drunk, and I am not hooking up with you, not when you’re in this state.”

“Playing hard to get?” Harry slurs.

“I am hard to get,” corrects Louis.

“Not the impression you gave me when you were rolling around on the floor with me last night and snogging me into oblivion, honey,” Harry says sassily, and Louis almost laughs, because he’s never genuinely heard anyone say something like that before, and it’s so stereotypically accurate for what gay guys are supposed to act like.

“Fine – I’m hard to keep,” sighs Louis as he pushes Harry away, in case he didn’t quite get the message. “I’m a one-night kind of guy.”

“You didn’t give me a full night,” Harry points out. “Technically, you owe me.”

What is Louis supposed to say to that?

~*~

Louis quickly discovers that he isn’t required to say anything at all, because when he reluctantly agrees to take Harry back to his flat so they can ‘discuss things’ he finds out that Harry’s version of discussion turns out to be, ‘Louis tries to talk while Harry kisses him distractingly, Louis loses his train of thought and every sentence turns into a jumble of lust and almost inhuman cries because whatever Harry is doing, he’s ridiculously good at it’.

“Don’t!” Louis pleads, grabbing Harry’s hair with both hands and pulling at it. “Don’t do that. Please. Please, please don’t do that!”

“Why not?” murmurs Harry.

And as Harry’s mouth moves persuasively underneath his jaw, pressing heated kisses down Louis’ neck that feel far too good and sending whining, needy little noises keening softly out of his mouth, and long fingers twist in Louis’ hair in retaliation and gently massage his scalp, Louis can’t help but echo the response and think giddily to himself: why not, indeed?

“We’re alone,” Harry murmurs, “and we’re together. There’s no one here to disturb us.” His fingers trail down Louis’ waist, then slide underneath his shirt and traces suggestive, careful lines down his stomach, almost a caress, but more lustful than loving. Louis wriggles and tries to push him away, but there is no willpower behind his shove.

“Hands off, Styles,” he says, but it is more of a plea than a command, and Harry ignores it. Louis doesn’t blame him; it sounds more like he’s begging for Harry to continue rather than asking him to stop. Laughing, Harry reaches for the hem of Louis’ jumper and tugs it upwards, pulling it over Louis’ head and leaving him shirtless. Almost shyly, he turns his head to look away, and Harry takes advantage of the new exposure of Louis’ neck by nipping at one of his collarbones.

“I might consider it,” he murmurs, “if I thought even for one moment that you actually wanted me to.” He puts a hand on Louis’ shoulder, admiring the sight of his pale skin on Louis’ tanned arm, and a low shudder quivers through Louis’ abdomen at both Harry’s touch, and his green eyes roving appraisingly across Louis’ chest, enjoying the view…almost savouring it. Harry’s tongue flickers out and he licks his lips, leaving them shiny. Louis wants to kiss them, but he is distracted by the sensation of warm fingers on his stomach.

Louis whines, “It’s too early in the day for this,” and he hates how silly and wheedling his voice sounds, like a spoilt child arguing with someone, trying to get his own way. His cheeks flush with embarrassment at how thin and reedy the words are as the slide out of his mouth.

Tilting his head to the left, Harry’s lips quirk upwards to the left and he asks playfully, “For what? Getting drunk, or getting laid?”

“Either one. I’m hung-over anyway, I’d rather not deal with this right now, if you don’t mind.” There is another concern niggling at the back of his mind, but he’d rather not bring it up if he can help it; he’s more than a little embarrassed.

“It’s never too early in the day for sex,” Harry contradicts. “We’re young. We’re free. I’m horny, you’re horny – lets have sex!”

A shocked laugh bursts out before Louis can turn it into a huff of disapproval. He reaches for Harry’s hand, pulls it away from his chest and places it on his bare left arm in an indication for Harry to stroke his arm instead. Of course, Harry isn’t particularly interested in that, and after running his fingers up and down Louis’ bicep for a while, enjoying the hard lines of muscle, and then he buries his face in Louis’ neck. His breath is warm, and Louis quite likes the feel of it tickling his skin, so he leans into the embrace. He can just imagine how it feels to snuggle up like that to Harry on a regular basis, tucked under his arm with him breathing out so softly…only Harry isn’t leaving him much time to think, because his touch is a little too insistent for that.

“Harry – oh!” Louis breaks off his fresh protests with a breathy little noise which, to him, is detestably weak. It shows how much he does want this, despite his arguments. It tells Harry exactly what he wants to hear, and a wicked fire sparks in Harry’s emerald eyes so that his expression dances and he looks so beautifully amused that Louis wants to grab him and growl at him and kiss that expression off his face, because God, it’s so attractive that it hurts..

“You know what I think?” murmurs Harry. “I think you’re trying to play games with me. That isn’t a good idea. I’m good at playing games, Louis – and we’re not talking about scrabble, here. You don’t want to play the kind of games that I’m playing.”

“You’re right; I don’t. I don’t want to do this. We shouldn’t be here; we shouldn’t be…” And just like that, Louis loses his train of thought, because Harry is truly an excellent kisser and guess what? He’s kissing Louis right now. That’s about when Louis is forced to admit to himself that okay, maybe he does want to do this, but pleading with Harry to do all manner of things to him that they should not be doing for the sake of decency…however tempting, that’s probably unattractive.

“Sorry? Do you mind saying that again?” teases Harry, dipping his head in closer so that his curls tickle Louis’ forehead, making him feel a little delirious. “I don’t think I quite heard that.”

I am not going to beg, Louis tells himself grimly, I will not beg, I will not beg, I will n – oh, Jesus! His mind becomes a jumble of incoherency and he has to grab hold of something to stop himself from becoming delirious. That something just so happens to be Harry’s arm, which is pretty embarrassing, because he’s clinging hard enough to leave bruises in the shape of his fingers on Harry’s pale wrist, and that will be a pretty incriminating reminder. Still, it makes Harry wince, and the twinge of satisfaction that Louis gets from that is probably a little unhealthy.

“Say it again,” Harry whispers.

“I don’t want –” Louis can’t get the words out.

Harry contradicts, “Oh, I think you do,” and then his mouth snatches another kiss from Louis’ mouth and steals it away forever. Still, Louis doesn’t really mind; he’s not sure he has enough presence of mind left to take it back.

There’s something very important that he’s forgotten, but his mind is perhaps more than a little engaged, lost in a whirlwind of complaints and refusal and enjoyment and desperation, and an inexplicable desire to carry on. And, of course, his body isn’t going to be left behind in the war that he appears to be waging against himself; it is also screaming to be heard by offering up a thousand and one different sensations to provoke him into doing things that he shouldn’t: his heart is pounding, squeezing and tearing, then clumsily knitting itself back together again with thick thread, and ripping apart all over again, like it can’t hold itself together anymore. There is a sore feeling in his throat from the forcefulness it took to stay silent, and that inevitable tightening in the pit of his abdomen that’s of an intensity only a few shades away from being unbearable.

He loves it.

Only the haze shatters, the veil of insanity tears and flutters in the breeze that comes in from the open front door that has just been calmly unlocked. There’s a rustle of carrier bags, a heavy breath of exertion as someone hauls their shopping over the threshold and dumps it on the doorstep, and a cheery call of “I’m home, Lou! Have you missed me? You know what, don’t even answer that – you’re hung-over; don’t say a word: you’re like a Boo Bear with a sore head!” An airy laugh, the sound of a coat being whipped off, and then the click of high heels on the linoleum as someone heads down the hallway and into the living room, head held high.

Conveniently, Louis now remembers what he’s forgotten to mention before; he’s twenty years old, he’s a partygoer, a regular drunk, a mad kid who often forgets where he’s parked his car and has even been known to forget where he lives after the odd wild night out, and he’s got a bit of a reputation as the local slut. Yet he still lives with his mum.

For the first time, he summons the willpower necessary to shove Harry away from him, and he fervently thanks God that Harry doesn’t wear lipstick so he doesn’t have to try and swipe the messy evidence off his swollen mouth. Pushing Harry into an upright position, he scrambles down to the end of the sofa and tries to rearrange himself into a more decorous position, a socially acceptable one, like he and Harry have been having a perfectly civilized conversation instead of coming close to making out on his mum’s sofa. His heart is hammering, he’s bright red in the face, and he’s mortified.

“Oh!” Jay notices the two of them at the same time, and she is obviously startled, but clearly the marks of passion haven’t been too obvious, because she smiles cheerily at Harry. “Hello! Louis didn’t tell me he was having friends around. I’m Jay, his mum. Hiya.”

Harry is an expert at winning people over. Louis knew this already, of course, but he hadn’t realized that Harry was capable of being quite that charming without resorting to kisses and caresses, and seduction whispered in ears. He has an innocent smile on his face, his hair has rearranged itself so it looks almost tidy, and he appears to have taken on the bright attitude of someone from an overly rehearsed advert, because he greets her “Hello, Mrs. Tomlinson, I’m Harry Styles.” He stands up, shakes her hand, and then sneaks the most fleeting and mischievous of glances in Louis’ direction before saying, “I’m Louis’ boyfriend.”

Louis was halfway out of his seat, but at this news, he drops back into it again with a helpless little gasp. He still doesn’t know who the hell Harry Styles is, but the one thing he does know is that Liam was right all along; Harry is wild and weird, and he doesn’t ask questions before he does something ridiculously unexpected and turns everything upside down. He’s just walked into Louis’ life, walked all over him, and apparently he’s planning on staying. That suits Louis just fine.


	3. Chapter 3

It has taken an awful lot of coercing, kisses and something not dissimilar to threats for Harry to persuade Louis to move in with him, because commitment isn’t really his thing. In fact, he’s learnt to shy away from the word like a frightened horse; commitment means being tied down, and that is something he cannot abide. But Harry has persuasive words at his disposal, an eloquent tongue that dances around the influential words on his lips and weaves them into a weapon of coercion that has Louis helplessly dominated and unable to even remember what it is to disagree. And convincing Louis into agreeing with him is not the only thing which Harry’s tongue is good at, not the only way it can dance. So one night, in between groans and the twist of fingers in curly hair and the brush of skin on skin, and the sensation of that clever tongue working in unison with those fantastic lips and making deep purple marks on Louis’ neck, Harry once again suggests “Move in with me?” and there’s only so many times Louis can say no.

It is by no means a small number of times, and the word ‘no’ leaves his mouth more than half a dozen times that night before a pouting Harry is flipping him over and pounding into him to try and force him into submission – and all those ‘no’s turn into “Oh, God, yes” and “please, Harry, please!” and “yeah, like that; keep doing – yes, yes, there, Harry!” and Harry is growling his request once again in his ear in a way that is less of a plea than a demand, until Louis can’t take it anymore and he’s sobbing his assent just so that Harry will purr against his collarbone and return those sinfully skilled lips to the back of his neck and move his hips even faster and bring his hand around to the front of Louis as well, matching the flick of his wrist to the jerks of his sharp hips against Louis’ body, and finally, finally Louis can let out a sob of relief as he falls over the edge of the aching brink he’s been trapped on for so long. And by the time he’s come down from that blissful high and lies shaking in Harry’s arms in their bed, he’s started to figure out that whoops, he just agreed to move in with Harry, and the bed he’s lying in is now theirs even more than it was already, rather than just Harry’s.

What worries him most of all is that he doesn’t object to that idea anywhere near as much as he should.

His complaints are minimal whilst he and Harry are moving his belongings out of his mother’s flat, away from interfering little sisters with curious, destructive hands. He doesn’t moan endlessly when he has to give up his own cramped bed with the Spiderman duvet for the big, spacious bed with the chocolate coloured sheets that match Harry’s hair, the bed where they hold each other every night and leave bruises on each other’s hips and play violent games that end in begging and the release of messy fluids onto previously pristine sheets. In fact, he doesn’t even wriggle away when he awakens in the middle of the night to discover Harry’s arms wrapped around him, holding him closely against his chest.

It astonishes him to come home to find food simmering on the stove or cooking in the oven, and delicious smells curling through the flat, rather than to discover that Jay and the girls have already eaten and he has to heat up his own microwave meals and eat them in solitude. He is confused to discover that he has to find mastery over a washing machine and learn how to wield an iron without burning brown marks into his favourite shirt or melting the plastic pattern on his boxers. It is even more bewildering that he does so without complaint, and almost enjoys the independence of finally being able to carry out the mundane tasks. He is shocked to discover that Harry kisses him fleetingly on the lips every day before Louis heads out to go to work, and to find that those lips curve up into a smile that lingers on his face for the whole day just because of that one simple gesture.

Louis is afraid, because he’s never really felt like this. He and Harry have been in some form of relationship for nearly six months, and that terrifies him. They have been sharing a flat for two months out of those six. When he leapt at Harry at that party it was only to prove a point to Liam, and to shock the self-satisfied smirk off Harry’s face. That smirk is indeed gone, but fondness is in its place.

Liam approves of his relationship, and that horrifies Louis a ridiculous amount. He’s in the unusual position of having Liam smile at the guy he was in bed with the night before, of having them joke around and laugh with each other. Having them meet at all is enough of a shock to the system for Louis, bearing in mind that most of his previous partners have lasted the duration of one night, maybe two weeks at the most, and even that was a record that surprised him. The two of them becoming friends is downright scary, and he feels a little uneasy when he hears Liam easily adopt the nickname “Hazza” that he finds affectionately falling from his own lips on increasingly frequent occasions. It’s all too sweet, too safe – and yet he forgets all of his concerns every time he crawls into bed with Harry and they start taking off clothes and doing things with their lips that are far more entertaining than talking.

Yet they talk, too, and that is another think to get used to. Louis tells Harry about his day and doesn’t have to censor everything for the sake of little ears eagerly listening in. Harry laughs at his dirty jokes rather than saying “Louis! Not in front of the girls!” at every interval. And then Harry tells him tales of his college antics and what he and his mates have been doing, and Louis snorts with amusement and shakes his head in all the right places and finds himself inwardly ‘awww’ing over the cute expression on Harry’s face as he excitedly tells each tale.

It frightens him to death, knowing that this boy has touched him where so many others have failed. He’s scared that he’s losing the game, that he’s lost it already, because when he wakes up with a flushed Harry by his side, hair standing on end and lips still swollen from the night before, marks of passion standing out on his pale skin, he doesn’t silently swing out of his bed, ghost over to the door and put his clothes back on, sneaking away and leaving only a memory of the night before as an indication that he was ever there. He’s petrified of the way his heart reacts when Harry calls his name from the other room, because it doesn’t just flutter with excitement; this isn’t a prelude to sex. It squeezes, constricting like it’s being crushed inside Harry’s enormous fist, and Louis comes running, wanting to see Harry’s face. He’s unused to being at someone else’s beck and call rather than he at theirs; it feels odd to know that Harry only has to say his name and he’ll come running.

His fear mainly comes from the dread in his stomach which implies that this might be love, and love is something he is unprepared for. It hits him like a smack in the face every time he finds himself thinking adoringly of Harry and realizes that he likes to see a smile on Harry’s face.

In fact, it gets so unnerving that he almost starts to crave his old life, his life of teetering on the rocks where all of his qualms could be silenced by the feel of a stranger’s lips on his, the taste of an unfamiliar mouth on his tongue, and an icy cold bottle in his hand that numbs everything and stops his brain from needing to think of such things. On occasion, he notices Harry’s anxiety too, and wonders if maybe Harry is just as worried as he is – after all, Harry’s no saint either. Perhaps he initiated this domestication, but it surprises him too that he is so fond of Louis, how much he would miss him if he wasn’t around. How his chest aches when he hears Louis’ voice say his name, the brilliant smile on his face every time they walk into a room hand in hand.

That slowly advancing dependence on the boy with the curly hair is what has Louis running for his life, making his excuses and spurring him onwards, out into the chill of the night. It’s what has him running to a place that welcomes him, a place that he missed; the dance floor, a room full of drunken, sweaty, grinding strangers, and now he is one of them. And even if Harry were there to call his name and pull him from his reverie, Louis would not hear him, because the music is far too loud – almost as loud as the beat of his heart.

~*~

He’s back to his old routine as he plucks a likely candidate from the crowd, a boy with bleached blond hair and gorgeous blue-green eyes and a loud laugh who seems both taken aback and delighted at being singled out from the crowd by Louis. By this time Louis has downed several bottles of a spirit stronger than even his own, and he’s feeling dizzy and bleary and struggling to focus. It doesn’t take him long to extricate this stranger from the fray, distance him from his friends, take him on one side and start kissing him.

The taste of an unfamiliar mouth feels so relieving, so achingly good – it’s all heat and no heart, which is exactly what Louis needs. He pushes the stranger up against the wall and grinds their crotches together, feeling the smaller boy straining up against him, panting for more friction, and it feels good to know that he can still reduce someone to this.

At some point the boy has attempted to introduce himself; his name is Miles or Kyle or maybe something beginning with an N, and Louis is pretty sure he’s Irish even though it’s hard to hear him over the music. He’s young; Harry’s age, maybe a little younger, and less sure of himself, although he gains confidence the longer Louis spends palming at the bulge in his jeans. The more dirty this becomes, the more calm Louis is getting, like this is all a release from the panic of realizing that he might be in lo –

No. He’s not having those kind of thoughts. He kisses the stranger harder and feels a moan slip into his mouth, and the beat of someone else’s heart against his chest. He remembers this all too well, and he hopes that this boy won’t mistake lust for something more. Louis plays around, but he hates breaking hearts along the way. Oh well. The lad seems pretty drunk; chances are he won’t remember this encounter by the morning.

Their hips roll together and the boy gasps and moans, grabbing two handfuls of Louis’ shirt. Louis has him by the hair, taking huge fistfuls of it, and knowing that he’s won gives him immense satisfaction. Because there is no question about it; he has won, and this boy is helpless beneath him, being gifted by Louis’ kisses and taking every touch Louis gives him with undying gratitude, fascinated by the way Louis knows exactly where to touch to drive him wild. At one point, Louis even has the audacity to drop to his knees and pull the boy’s shirt upwards, halfway up his stomach, to take a couple of the hairs trailing down the boy’s stomach in between his teeth and tug lightly at them, making the boy gasp and cry out and smack frantically at Louis’ back with the flat of his hands. A growl of satisfaction comes from deep within Louis’ chest; he still has it, the capability to reduce a stranger to a crying, quivering mess with only his mouth and his hands. He swells with pride at the thought of that.

Niall (that’s it, that’s his name! Louis has never heard it before, but he has the sense that it’ll be a forgettable one and it won’t be added to the list of names which he actually recalls on the odd occasions that he finds himself musing over how many conquests he’s had) is weak beneath his expert hands. It’s nice to find someone so submissive, someone who won’t fight him, who won’t insist upon having the upper hand every now and then and making him cry out once in a while. Louis likes having hands on his skin and having Harry inside of him and feeling the soft whisper of lips on his neck; he enjoys the way Harry has taken the time to learn all of his sweet spots and always makes sure to pay attention to all of them each time they’re in bed, from the sensitive skin of his stomach just above the place where his boxers lie, to the place on his neck that he so loves to be kissed, to that place deep inside of him that burns with such unquenchable fire and pulses with such immense and almost unbearable pleasure every time Harry hits it. But at the same time, it’s nice to be in charge and know that this clumsy stranger is his to play with and not the other way round, and the boy squirming and panting at his touch is unable to render him incapacitated any time he likes just by raining kisses on certain places where his pleasure peaks to levels he can’t stand.

It’s also nice not to be teased. This straightforward, honest, no-nonsense approach is refreshing compared to Harry’s frustrating tendency to tantalize him, to slowly brush every one of his most sensitive places and leave him crying with desperation and white-hot desire before Harry’s speed intensifies and he brings Louis over the edge and he sees stars and stops needing, stops wanting, and is left trembling while Harry kisses him all over to ease him gently back down from the place where he goes when he loses his mind to the dazzling, almost painful intensity with which Harry makes him come.

Only in a moment of what is either an incredible deduction or an extremely untimely coincidence, the blond boy’s lips find the place where Louis’ neck and shoulders join, the place which only Harry has ever found so successfully and so quickly, the place which he sees as being exclusively Harry’s property, and then he remembers everything.

The white flash of Harry’s teeth as he smiles. The soft tickle of his chocolate curls on Louis’ skin when they lie together at night. His hand tapping playfully at Louis’ backside as they pass in the kitchen; that little crease in his forehead when he’s concentrating. The silly answers he shouts out at the television when they’re watching stupid game shows, and his endless frustration when he actually knows the answer and the participants get it wrong. That soft light he gets in those sparkling, ivy-coloured eyes sometimes when he looks at Louis. His voice when he moans or sings in the shower. His achingly beautiful laugh. The sensation of his big hands brushing against Louis’ skin.

And here Louis is, kissing a clumsy stranger who found Harry’s special place purely out of luck.

He is disgusted, both at the blond boy and himself. Horrified, he pushes the kid away and wonders if he’s even of age, because his eyes are wide and frightened, beginning to fill with tears, wondering what he’s done wrong, and he looks so young, a child really, how could he ever be Harry’s age? And he realizes that he was only drawn to this boy, only noticed him, because the shirt he’s wearing looks like the one Harry throws on at lazy weekends, which is ridiculous because it’s totally inappropriate for a club. The boy has a pale face like Harry’s, and he’s skinny like Harry, although his bones are less sharp and don’t dig so delightfully into Louis’ skin when he’s pressed against him. He realizes that it was the similarities to Harry that had drawn him to this boy, and he’s horrified. He drags the back of his hand across his mouth to wipe away the taste of the Irish stranger and his cans of beer, the sour taste of which is foul and Louis hates. He loves the way Harry never drinks beer, because he hates it too – and now, with his mind full of Harry, he realizes he’s just kissed a stranger. He’s cheated on Harry. It feels horrible to know that he’s betrayed Harry in that way, and he sweeps the blond boy aside and leaves him crying, rubbing at his red eyes and feeling worthless, cheap, someone to be used like a tissue and thrown away.

Louis feels cheap too. Cheap and nasty. He’s always refused to believe that he’s a slut, but maybe he is – an awful, cheating slut. It hurts to think of himself that way, but he can only imagine how Harry would look if he ever found out. That hurts even more.

He skulks back home with his tail between his legs, head hanging like a dog in disgrace. He stinks of betrayal (and sweat, and the club, and the alcohol he drunk to make his behaviour seem rational, fairer.) Once he’s in the shower, he turns it on full blast and closes his eyes to try and forget what he’s done. Hot water cascades over his shoulders and pours down his back, cleansing him – but although he can wash the feel of Niall’s hands off his body and scrub the touch of his lips against Louis’ neck, he can’t wipe those things out of his memory, can’t shake off his self-loathing, his disgust.

When Harry comes home, Louis decides on an early night – he can barely look at Harry in shame. In fact, it’s so awful that he pretends to be asleep so that Harry won’t try to persuade him into any form of intimacy; he’s terrified that Harry might see his swollen lips and guilty expression and figure it all out. But when he feels Harry’s soft lips graze his cheek, hears him murmur “Good night, Louis,” hesitate and stop, stuttering into silence, as they always do before the “I love you” that naturally ought to come next, he feels his heart fracture down the middle, feels it crack, and he has to press his lips tightly together to hold back a low sob of remorse for betraying Harry in this way, even if Harry will never know.

At that moment, he’s gladder than he ever has been that they’re both too scared of commitment to ever manage to say the words that linger in the space between their mouths every night, too afraid of the bonds, the restraining promises and connotations that come with the “I love you”s that they both secretly want to say but are too worried of the repercussions. He waits for Harry to lie down by his side and drape an arm over his waist, and he closes his eyes even more tightly shut, guilt knotting in the pit of his stomach.

He’s the most horrible person in the world.


	4. Chapter 4

_You’re always better off with a really good lie._

That’s Harry’s favourite quote. He can never for the life of him remember where he first heard it, but it’s always stuck with him. That one short sentence is him all over; he’s always been a convincing liar. Perhaps it has something to do with his enthralling tone, the way he knows exactly when to lower his voice and flutter his eyelashes, the way he likes to shape the story with his hands and can look quite so earnest with so little effort. He can make lies sound like music, like magic, and he knows what kind of falsehoods people like to hear. Harry’s lies are the best kind, each one specifically tailored to suit the recipient. People always like to listen to things that they want to hear, and he’s excellent at manipulating that, using it to his advantage.

He loves the way they feel as they leave his mouth, dripping off his tongue like honey. Secretly, he loves to listen to the sound of the lies coming from him and seeing people swallow them. They taste ever so sweet, with just a slightly bitter aftertaste, the taste of forbidden fruits. Of naughtiness and rebellion. The thought makes him longingly lick his lips. It’s been so long since he told a lovely, big lie. Oh, he tells petty untruths every single day, doing it discreetly – the way everyone else does. Yes, he’s ever so sorry, he left his sociology coursework on the desk at home, and it won’t happen again, sir – and he punctuates it with a sheepish smile. No, mum,  of course he didn’t forget to iron his pants! No, he’s afraid Mr. Styles isn’t here at the moment, can he take a message? But nothing satisfies him, really, like proper, ridiculous, blatant lies. Artfully deceiving telemarketers to get them to go away, making up excuses to dodge the fact that he didn’t do his homework and pretending to his mother that he’s more responsible than he actually is – that’s kids stuff. Who  _doesn’t_ do that? And it really isn’t enough, not really. Those are the kind of lies fifteen year olds tell.

Lies used to come more naturally to him than the truth did, at one point, and he misses the thrill of that. Everything being an act, living the lies that he wove with his clever tongue until he almost believed them himself. It was  _fun._

And now look at him!  _Domesticated_ , he thinks in disgust. He initiated it in the first place mainly because he wanted to be able to wake Louis up in the middle of the night, shocking him out of sleep so that he was confused and disorientated, and then fuck his brains out and nearly make him fall out of bed in surprise. Also because he fancied the idea of having someone to share his flat, because it used to get kind of lonely before Louis turned up and started flinging his boxer shorts around and eating microwave meals without washing the plates, and leaving his CDs in Harry’s stereo so that he nearly blasted his ears off when  _Mr. Brightside_  by The Killers exploded out of the speakers at top volume rather than the rather nice piece of Mozart that he had hidden in there and was secretly planning to enjoy while Louis was out. But now…

Now he wakes up in the morning with Louis by his side, and he likes that. They get breakfast together and a lot of the time he practically has to feed Louis by hand because he’s still half asleep, and he likes that too. And he spends the whole day filled with thoughts of his boyfriend (God! He’s actually got a boyfriend!) and when he finally bounces through the front door and gets to kiss Louis so hard that it hurts, so hard that they both slam into the kitchen counter sometimes and are left with even more tender bruises than usual, he likes that even more. In fact, he might just like that part best of all, and there are lots of things about Louis that he likes.

 _That_ is honesty in its most brutal form, and oh, how he hates it.

The question is this: how well does Louis know him? And how well does he know Louis? Well enough to lie to him and get away with it, like he so wants to? Lies…well, they turn him on, to be blunt about it. He remembers the first time he ever had sex, with some silly girl he’d been dating for a couple of weeks, maybe just over a month – she’d been uncertain about the whole thing, being a virgin herself, so he’d told her a seemingly harmless little lie: “I love you”. He felt awful about it afterwards, because it was a low blow, and he vowed never to tell that particular falsehood ever again. That was a little  _too_ cruel, even for him. But truthfully, he likes boys better than girls – angles are far better than curves, short hair is less ticklish than long, and he likes the way that men know how to satisfy each other better than girls think they know how to satisfy them. It was a struggle to get anything out of it at all, to even enable himself to carry out the act in the first place. Truthfully, it was only after he’d told the lie that he found himself being aroused. And then they did it, and it wasn’t too bad, all things considered, but hardly worth repeating.

He’d only been after the experience, really. And it hadn’t been a particularly impressionable one. So a couple of weeks after that, once he’d told the girl where to go in the nicest way possible (something along the lines of “it’s not you; it’s me” – oldest trick in the book, after all this time he still couldn’t believe she’d swallowed that one – and then shoving her into the path of one of his slightly more honourable and rather attractive friends so that she found herself a nice new boyfriend to soften the blow) he went to a club with condoms in his pocket, found a guy, invited him back to a hotel, and that was that. Sex. And it was far nicer that way than it had been with the girl, which was how he figured out once and for all that he definitely liked guys. He was 100% okay with that.

The idea of lying straight into Louis’ ear, whispering treacherous lies against his skin…it makes Harry shiver, something tightening inside his boxers, and he closes his eyes and thinks about it for a while, enjoying the idea. He especially loves it when people fall for it, so he’d want something believable. But if he gets it wrong, he risks upsetting Louis, and that is something which he most definitely  _doesn’t_ want. So he has to be very, very careful about what he says.

Is it wrong to get off on making things up, just for the hell of it? Just because he enjoys the thrill, the risk of being caught? Most definitely. But that’s the best part; knowing that he, Harry Styles, is a disgusting human being who lies without thinking and prefers making things up so that he sometimes struggles to remember what is real and what came from his head. Oh, he most definitely likes that.

~*~

His first lie isn’t a very big one. He’s decided to start off easy, just in case. After all, he isn’t really in the habit of lying to Louis, and if he’s going to give himself away, he’d really rather it be over something insignificant that they’ll forget pretty easily.

So he waits until Louis has tipped out a giant pile of clean washing onto the pile of clothes to be ironed, and while Louis his distracted, he tiptoes in and snatches Louis’ favourite shirt off the pile, the one that he’s always secretly liked. It drapes loosely enough over Louis’ frame that he knows it would fit him quite well, but he’s never been able to pluck up the courage to ask if he can borrow it. Which makes no sense, really, bearing in mind that he’s never been the shy type. Still, he doesn’t quite like to ask, so he takes instead, and then he smuggles it underneath their bed, hiding it, and waits for Louis to notice. His stomach is in knots, and those knots are tied around the antennae of several thousand butterflies, restraining them there. He can feel them fluttering around inside of him, and he excitedly waits.

It takes longer than expected for Louis to notice that anything is amiss, and Harry is lying flat on his back on their bed with his headphones in, listening to some classical music which as far as the rest of the world is concerned, he doesn’t have. (He  _doesn’t_ like it, it’s just relaxing, that’s all! It puts him to sleep sometimes. Anyway, when words don’t describe how he feels, just the nice, soothing background of melancholy piano tones are often more reassuring than anything else. Raw emotions, rather than something that’s been defined by a human voice. It’s lovely, really – not that he likes it at  _all_!) Anyway, he’s looking up at the ceiling, listening to Bach, when all of a sudden a gorgeous tanned face is looming over him, and Louis kisses him on the nose and wrenches his headphones out of his ears.

“Have you seen my shirt?”

“Rude,” Harry huffs, “I was listening to that!”

“Whoops. Sorry.” Pause. “But have you seen my shirt?”

“Which shirt?” asks Harry patiently. Here it comes; the lie. Rather than feeling tense, he feels excited, kind of thrilled at the thought of the falsehood which is about to leave his lips. Louis’ body is pressed against him and he fights to stay still, controlling his expression with his usual expertise. Not even his eyes can betray him if he doesn’t want them to. Eyes are important, Harry knows, and he is an expert at making sure that his tell the exact same lie as the rest of him does. He would never give himself away with something as silly as forgetting to lie with his eyes.

“My favourite one. The Hollister one with the stripes. You must know the one I mean!” Louis shakes his head impatiently, hovering over Harry with his fringe falling into his eyes. “Come on, you’ve told me enough times how much you like it.”

After pretending to consider for a few moments, Harry snaps his fingers – not an easy feat, bearing in mind that Louis is lying on top of him and pinning him down by the arms, shaking his head. “Yes! I know the one! The sexy one, am I right, or am I right? Makes you look kind of like…” he waves his hand airily, scanning his brain for a celebrity that Louis vaguely resembles. Deciding that everybody enjoys flattery, and the resemblance may be faint but it exists, he decides upon “Leonardo Di Caprio.”

Louis snorts. “ _What_? Leonardo Di Caprio? You’re joking!” But Harry allows the bait to settle for a moment or so, keeping his expression innocent with just the right amount of lust, and Louis’ fingers begin trailing lightly down his bicep. “Really?”

Biting his lip suggestively, Harry shifts underneath him as if he is struggling to stay still, narrowing his eyes appreciatively and practically  _purring_ “Definitely.”

Making a reluctantly pleased noise, Louis sniffs and attempts to pretend that he isn’t flattered. He isn’t fooling Harry for a second, but of course, Harry’s face remains impassive, as if he’s merely enjoying the thought of Louis wearing that rather attractive shirt. “Hmm,” says Louis. “Well, be that as it may, I need to find it. Have you seen it, or haven’t you?”

“I don’t think so. Where did you last have it?” In order to scramble Louis’ thoughts and distract him to keep him from having a clear head, he strokes the swell of one of Louis’ somewhat impressive biceps, enjoying the feel of smooth skin.  _Very nice_ , he thinks approvingly, and resolves to mark that particularly luscious section of tanned brown skin with some lovely bruises later, courtesy of his own large mouth. Louis had better be grateful; not everyone is worthy of having quite so many marks left on them by Harry Styles.

“That’s the thing; I could have sworn I left it on the top of the ironing pile about twenty minutes ago! I don’t know where it can have gotten to.” A frown creases Louis’ forehead. He looks pretty, even when he’s frowning. One day, he’ll be an attractive older man; his wrinkles will tell the tale of how often he smiles, and that’s always nice to see.

Blinking up at him as if he’s surprised, Harry teases, “You, ironing? In that case, babe, I know exactly where your shirt is – it’s probably still in the washing machine. You probably hallucinated that you got it out again; you probably went into shock when you realized you could actually use the iron!”

“Ha-ha.” Louis pokes him sourly in the chest. “Just because I’m a free spirit and I’m unused to ironing.” Still, he smirks a bit anyway in acknowledgement of the banter.

“Oh, I know, I know,” Harry carries on, grinning; he really is enjoying this now. The initial nerves have gone and he’s relaxed into his lies like slipping into a warm bath. It feels lovely, like coming home, and he almost wishes he’d started fibbing sooner. “I know what happened to it now! You must have melted it!” He giggles with glee.

Scandalized, Louis pretends not to be embarrassed, but he is clearly flustered because a pink patch appears on each cheek, a little rosy swirl of a blush, and he can’t quite meet Harry’s eyes in shame. “That was one time!”

“Six,” corrects Harry delightedly, his smile refusing to fade, “and that isn’t counting the time you left a giant iron-shaped brown mark on the back of my best Chinos. Which you still owe me for, by the way.” He can’t bring himself to look disapproving; he’s too amused by Louis’ obvious mortification.

“Shhhhh!” whines Louis, “we promised not to talk about that.”

“Maybe you lost it down the back of the sofa!” suggests Harry wickedly, raising his eyebrows, “like you did with your wallet. And my phone. And my mum’s bus pass and that pizza coupon and half the counters from that old Monopoly game that we tried to play the other week.”

Turning bright red, Louis protests, “I didn’t  _lose_ any of those things. I was putting them in storage. I knew exactly where they were.”

“Where’s your shirt, then? Did it fly out of the window?” Harry laughs at the disgruntled expression on Louis’ face because he can’t think of much to say to that, let alone something clever. He doesn’t like being out-bantered.

Grumbling, Louis picks himself up off the bed and starts prowling grumpily around the room, opening the wardrobe and looking under the chair and picking up piles of clothes that are lying around to see if his shirt is underneath any of them. For the first time since the lie left his tongue, Harry is nervous, but he tries not to show it. Outside, he is the epitome of calm – inside, he is quivering like a bowlful of jelly in an earthquake. It isn’t such a big lie, really, but his nerves are in shreds. Maybe that’s why he keeps making silly jokes; it makes him feel better.

“You’re being a right pain this morning,” complains Louis. “Tell you what; when I  _do_ find my shirt, I’m going to smother you with it.” Picking up his pillow off the floor, he lobs it at Harry, who catches it easily and stuffs it underneath his head with a lazy grin.

“That’s lovely, that is. Violence is not the answer, you know.”

“It helps.”

Before Harry’s snort of laughter has even left his throat (or nose, or mouth, or wherever those undignified pig-like sounds of amusement come from when laughter is simply impossible to restrain) he watches with amazement as Louis begins hurling clothes, books, an old sock and a DVD ( _Love Actually_ , if you’re interested; Harry’s favourite film) across the room, still determined to hunt down his missing shirt. He can’t help but be fascinated by Louis’ irritation, and props himself up on one elbow to watch Louis grow more and more frustrated as his shirt remains determinedly unfound. Knowing that he could produce it at any second is incredibly satisfying, and Harry struggles not to look smug as he enjoys the sight of a flustered Louis with his hair sticking up at odd angles, cheeks flushed pink and expression confused and annoyed as he searches. He can’t decide whether it’s cute, hot, or a combination of the two.

Louis is adorably frustrated by now, almost frantically running his slender hands through his hair, rumpling it so that it is fluffier and messier than ever. Harry wants to join him and run his fingers through it himself. “I’m going to find that shirt, you know!”

“It probably ran away,” says Harry lazily, dropping his head again to loll against Louis’ rather nice-smelling pillow. “When it saw you brandishing an iron, it knew what was coming and decided to risk its chances in the big wild world rather than taking the risk of having you iron it.”

“You think you’re so cute. I’m not a big boy, okay? My mum did my ironing for twenty years, I can’t cook, and I watch Disney Channel when you’re not around. So yes, I have no idea how to iron and my clothes probably quake in their boots when I pull them out of the washing machine; they probably tell horror stories in  the dead of night about the grievous burns and horrible death by melting that they’re in danger of being subjected to every time I get out the ironing board. I admit it, okay! Now where the  _hell_ is my shirt?”

He seems to be on the verge of a toddler tantrum, and Harry can’t decide whether or not it’s going to be cute enough for him to enjoy it, funny enough for him to enjoy laughing at it, or awkward enough for him to intervene. After a minute or so, seeing Louis get adorably wound up, he decides that it’s going to be well worth watching, so he sits up and settles back to enjoy the spectacle of Louis wailing over his lost shirt and throwing things even more frantically across the room in his hunt for it. It’s really too cute.

Harry somehow gets the idea that he’s going to have an awful lot of fun with this whole lying thing. Even more fun than usual – and the thought sends an enormous, unrestrained smile creeping across his face.


	5. Chapter 5

Louis never  _meant_ to do it a second time.

It’s one of the rare nights they aren’t spending together, long limbs tangled together as they lie in bed and Louis’ strokes Harry’s curly hair while Harry lies back against his bare chest and they whisper secrets to one another, showing their vulnerable sides that few people see. When Harry isn’t flirting or teasing or winding people up, and Louis isn’t partying or hurling biting sarcasm at anyone who so much as looks at him funny, they both secretly enjoy the quiet times they spend together. Cups of tea, pillows fights in the morning, silly tickling wars, Harry running Louis a bath after a long day at work and aligning flickering red candles all around the edges of the tub…these are the times Louis loves Harry best, and the times Harry pretends not to revere as much as the older boy. These are the times when they realize that they really _have_ begun to settle down, and they could get used to this.

Those are the nights when Louis forgets that he used to party til dawn and not care how much his head ached when he woke up in the afternoon, but when Harry isn’t around to remind him what his life has become, that is when he starts to crave the party scene. Thudding beats of music that he can barely hear, churning bodies, garish flashing lights in a club as he knocks back something that tastes foul and washes away the taste with the taste of a stranger’s neck beneath his lips.

Harry has gone out to see a friend who’s suffered a rather nasty break-up, and left Louis alone in a flat which is too quiet yet loud in all the wrong ways. The dripping tap with the washer that they never bothered to get fixed. The odd creak that comes from the floorboards that no one treads on or the whoosh of the boiler turning itself on. Snatches of laughter from the street below. And Louis is all alone, sat on the sofa with all the lights switched off and feeling sorry for himself.

He can’t stand it.

He tries distracting himself with mundane things like disorganizing Harry’s CD collection because it’s so hilarious seeing Harry get frustrated when he has to tidy them all again, and rattling dishes in the kitchen to try and create some background noise. He turns the volume up on the headphones he’s jammed into his ears to block out the silence that’s screaming out at him, louder than any music he could ever blare at full volume into his ears. Nervous energy has him bouncing helplessly around, unable to sit still. The sounds of a party are drifting down the street; whenever he jerks too violently and rips his headphones out by accident, he hears people screaming with laughter and dance music buzzing, and the whole street vibrates with it. It makes him itch with longing. In days past, he would have sneaked into the party by some back entrance or bluffed his way into being granted entrance by hanging onto someone’s arm and flirting adeptly whenever the need arose. He aches for the excitement of it all.

The blond boy, Niall, swims into his mind as he remembers the last time he felt so desperate to plunge into the depths of a party, and he sits on the sofa and clenches his fist, rubs his eyes, tries to ignore the urge. He won’t do that to Harry again.

But then he remembers an old friend of his; a guy called Zayn who was always unashamedly up for it. A friend who understood that everything was no strings attached, who wouldn’t be hurt when Louis walked out and left him like what they’d done didn’t mean anything because it  _didn’t_ mean anything, and Zayn knew that. He didn’t expect anything from Louis apart from the buzz of plain and simple sex – not that Louis has any intention of letting it get that far. He’s a dirty filthy cheat, that much is true, but he isn’t going to let it go any further than pinning each other up against the wall, maybe a bit of groping, but nothing worse than that. No sex. That’s Harry’s privilege and Harry’s alone, now. And Zayn’s had girlfriends, and boyfriends in the past, who didn’t want to be rushed, and at times like those Louis has always been on the end of the phone for Zayn to unleash some pent up frustration on him, or vice versa. And Louis still has his number, and they haven’t talked for a while, but he doesn’t see the harm.

It doesn’t take him long to scroll through his contacts; there aren’t very many of them. Louis’ had a lot of phone numbers scribbled onto the back of his hand or shoved into his back pocket in his time, but he never bothers tapping them in; he rarely ever calls anyone back, and when he gets bored of the few people he actually contacts again, he deletes their number immediately. No point in letting them clog up his contacts. The only numbers he has there are Liam’s, his mother’s, his father’s, a couple of old school friends, a few of the guys from work, the local pizza delivery company, the two of his sisters’ old enough to own phones…and Harry’s.

And Zayn’s, of course.

Zayn picks up somewhere between the eighth or ninth ring, while Louis is still manically chewing on his fingernails, and his greeting is a friendly, “Alright?” which instantly puts Louis at ease.

“I need to ask a favour of you,” Louis tells him matter-of-factly, straight to the point as always.

Faintly amused, Zayn asks, “Don’t I even get a hello?”

“Hello, Zayn,” Louis says a little bit impatiently, “now if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, you owe me a bit of undignified dry-humping against a wall. Where are you?”

“Well, I knew you didn’t beat about the bush, Louis, but that seems a  _little_ forward, even for you. You haven’t called on me for a while; I was beginning to think maybe you didn’t need your ol’ fuck-buddy Zayn anymore.” He still sounds like he’s struggling not to laugh. “Last I heard, you were running around town cheerfully tumbling into bed with a different stranger every night.”

“Yeah, well.” Louis’ throat has gone dry. “You know what I like. It’s nice sometimes to have someone who knows what they’re doing with you rather than kind of going with instinct… instincts can be wrong sometimes. I kind of wanted someone who knew my kinks.”

There is an awful moment of silence where Louis wonders with his heart thumping whether Zayn might have been in touch with Liam lately; despite his disapproval of the rather limitless parameters of Zayn and Louis’ friendship, Zayn and Liam are friends too. In fact, they have had rather more contact than Louis and Zayn have of late, mainly due to the fact that Liam and Zayn usually talk, whereas Zayn and Louis usually focus on getting each other off. It leaves little time left for conversation. And one thing that Zayn and Louis have always agreed upon is that if there’s no valid reason for their sex, if one of them has a partner who they’re already sexually active with, it’s just  _greed_ to take advantage of each other, which is why he knows that if word has spread to Zayn that Louis is with Harry, he won’t get this. And he _needs_  it. Just one more time.

Then Zayn says “Nothing wrong with that, I suppose.” Louis can practically  _hear_ him shrugging down the phone. “Where do you want me to meet you? You’re not still living with your mum, right? Give me your address; I’ll pop around to your place.”

“No,” interrupts Louis quickly, “no, not mine.” The thought of Zayn wandering ankle-deep in Harry’s dirty socks, laying Louis down on the bed that Louis and Harry share at night, making Louis moan into Harry’s pillow – no. He cannot abide that. “What about yours?”

An uncomfortable pause has him wondering whether perhaps Zayn has something to hide too. “How about the Traveller’s Rest on the highway? In ten?”

He’ll agree to anything now; he’s beyond desperate. “Okay then. I’ll see you there.”

Luck, apparently, is not on his side, because just as Louis is heading out with a beanie pulled down over his forehead and his tightest jeans on, trying not to look shifty, he’s heading out of the door when it flies open, almost hitting him in the face, and he jerks back with a yelp of surprise as he discovers that he’s face to face with none other than Harry, who looks equally taken aback.

He’s wearing chinos and a grey sweater, and Supras, and his hair is a ruffled mess having been tossed around by the wind, his cheeks and nose pink, either from the cold outside or from the exertion of hurrying up the stairs. He looks absolutely gorgeous as always, and when his gloved hands reach out, grab Louis by the waist, then spin him around and drag him in for a kiss, Louis is stunned by both his enthusiasm and the sheer coincidence that Harry should turn up to thwart his own attempt at meaningless cheating.

“Hey,” he says softly against Louis’ mouth, and Louis’ whole body reverberates with the gentle sensation of that simple word tingling through every bone he has.

“H-hey,” Louis stammers in return, and hopes that Harry will put it down to surprise and lust rather than guilt. “You’re home early,” he observes.

“Yeah, there wasn’t much I could do back there other than watch Aiden cry for a couple more hours, and that’s not my idea of fun. I gave him a bottle of vodka and left him to drink himself into a coma; by the morning he’ll be over her, and if he isn’t, I’ll keep administering the vodka cure until he is.”

“You, sir, are the epitome of friendship.”

“Why thank you.” Harry’s answering grin is wicked as his fingertips linger on Louis’ chest. “Well, someone looks a bit worked up. Didn’t interrupt anything, did I?” He toys with the zipper on Louis’ jeans and smirks at the little twitch Louis gives in response.

So Harry thinks he was halfway through getting himself off. Figures. He doesn’t quite understand how Harry got to that conclusion bearing in mind that he was halfway out of the door fully dressed and with every intention to go out, but it’s easier to go with the assumption.

“Nothing that couldn’t be improved by a little company,” breathes Louis, leaning into Harry’s big hands and feeling fingers squeeze him in a place that prior to their relationship was mostly kept private, and it feels unimaginably good.

He didn’t know that anyone could smile as widely as Harry is now. “Well, in that case, we should probably set about improving it right away. I’d better take off some of these extra layers.” He playfully kisses Louis on the nose like this is a game, and Louis can’t help but blush, feeling like an idiotic fifteen year old girl. “I’ll see you in the bedroom, sweet.”

When did Harry start calling him ‘sweet’?

More importantly, when did he start liking it?

As Harry vanishes into the bedroom, Louis pulls his phone out and hastily hits redial. If he and Harry are going to be busily entwined in the throes of passion in mere minutes, it will rather ruin the mood if they are interrupted by an irate phone call from Zayn demanding to know where his fuck buddy has gone and why he hasn’t showed up.

Zayn answers on the first ring but says nothing, so Louis speaks first. “I can’t make it tonight.”

One of his favourite things about Zayn is that he doesn’t demand explanations for every little cancelation. There’s a slightly confused pause, perhaps curiosity from the other boy, and then he answers easily, “Okay.”

“I just…you know, I’ve got things to do, previous commitments, I didn’t think –” Yep, he really is babbling, scrambling for pathetic excuses and grabbing them with both hands. How degrading. He knows Zayn isn’t buying it; they both know that, but the younger boy has the good grace to pretend he believes him.

“Sure, no problem.”

“You didn’t book the room already, did you? Because I can give you the money back –”

“Nah, I’m not even there yet. I can just turn around and walk home right now.” He doesn’t even sound particularly put out, and Louis knows that had their roles been reversed, he would have been far less understanding, which makes him feel bad.

“Sorry about that.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“You’re not too disappointed, right?”

He’s certain Zayn cracks a smile at that; he can practically  _hear_ him grinning down the phone like the Cheshire cat. “Lou, please. You’re not  _that_ good a shag. I’m sure I’ll survive from the _crippling_  disappointment of missing out on our incredible dry-humping session in a classy motel room, don’t you worry.”

“Hey, I’m serious. I’m feeling bad over here!”

“Don’t worry. I’m a bit tired anyway, to be honest.”

“You should have said before, and I wouldn’t have made you come out.”

“Don’t worry about it, seriously. I owe you a favour anyway. It was great to hear from you though, Lou; you should call me again sometime, we’ll talk. I’ve kind of missed your goofy face, strange as it sounds.”

Despite himself, Louis grins. “I’ll remind you of that next time I wipe the floor with you at Mario Kart and you start calling me every name under the sun, you gutter mouth. I’ll see you around.”

The call disconnects as Harry comes wandering back in, wearing a distractingly little amount of clothing.

“Who was that?”

“My mother,” lies Louis without a second thought. “I told her I was otherwise engaged.”

Harry’s answering grin is amused and seductive at the same time; an interesting combination. “Well, you are, aren’t you?” Then he growls and dives at Louis, knocking him to the floor as he bites teasingly at one of his collarbones, and suddenly, Louis most certainly  _is_ otherwise engaged.


	6. Chapter 6

He wasn’t really at Aiden’s.

He went out with an old friend of his, Caitlyn-Marie, and used the opportunity to tell her all about his fantastic boyfriend of six months and how great he was in bed, and yeah, he never thought he was the type to settle down either, but this was just  _different,_ y’know? And he’d undressed her with his eyes even as he said it because later knowing he had done it would all be part of the game, and he had to admit that if he ever had to turn straight for any girl, he’d turn for Caitlyn. Her long, lithe legs, compact body and cap of chestnut hair left her looking distinctly boyish, but extremely hot, and he would happily have slid the sparkling diamond engagement ring off her finger and slipped in between her bed-sheets had he not had a partner of his own. Lies, Harry thrives on, but cheating is something he cannot condone. He’ll tell the biggest lies imaginable, but he will stay faithful to the bitter end.

He’s at home alone now; it’s an inset day at college and Louis has gone to work, leaving him alone, and he’s starting to wish he’d asked Louis to stay after all because the thought of the lie he got away with so easily has made his boxers tighten, and now they’re straining, and it feels pretty lame to know that he’ll have to take care of this by himself.

His lies are getting bigger, bigger, bigger, and it isn’t enough. The bigger the lie, the more he craves the next one, wanting to see how much Louis will swallow. He knows from experience that Louis will quite happily swallow  _other_ things (the thought has a dirty grin spreading across his face) but Harry prefers to give him lies rather than anything else.

So far, he’s been quite cautious, telling insignificant fibs or lies that will be hard to disprove. After-hours study sessions at college that never took place; instead he wandered around town for an extra hour instead. He was invited over by a friend. He forgot to do the shopping, rather than the actual truth, which was that he just didn’t bother. And now his personal favourite has been this one, because he knows full well that Aiden  _did_ split up with his girlfriend, due to her angry screeching statuses on Facebook and the flurry of comments on each and every one of Aiden’s statuses for the past week, related to her or not (each punctuated with a >L or some other unfriendly emoticon). He also knows that on occasions such as these, Aiden will happily drink himself into oblivion, and will be incapable of remembering who came around the night before at all. So he left the vodka on the doorstep, and he has an alibi that Aiden will not have the memory to disprove.

Oh, how he’s looking forward to telling some bigger lies. It’s going to be the biggest turn on in the world, which will make things harder, since he’ll have to contend with arousal and some fantastic acting at the same time. He’s most eager to try claiming the death of a long-lost relative, so that he can get a bit teary-eyed and get a couple of cuddles out of it, and because the thrill of a lie that large will keep him on the brink of being hard for more than a week, at least. Lies are very, very sexy, especially when Louis accepts them so willingly.

It’s occurred to him that this probably isn’t healthy, but it’s such a fantastic feeling. Louis trusts him implicitly, and it gives him a warm feeling inside, and it feels like warm hands stroking him in approval whenever he sees Louis nod trustingly in response to a falsehood.

~*~

When Louis gets home with a still-warm pizza box balanced on the flat of one hand, his keys hanging from his little finger and a cheerful greeting on his lips, the flat is silent. A quick scout of the rooms, and he finds Harry bundled into the shower, long limbs everywhere, slumped up against the wall, stark naked and shivering in his sleep. Despite himself, Louis can’t help but grin. In the shower, completely exhausted and dead to the world, after having the whole flat to himself for the entire day? It’s not rocket science to work out what  _he’s_ been doing.

His first obligation, of course, is to whip out his phone, strategically cover Harry with a towel and take a couple of pictures for the purpose of blackmail (well, you never know when you’ll need to blackmail someone with threats to put embarrassing naked pictures on Facebook, do you? And by this time, Harry is  _drooling_ , with his mouth hanging wide open, so they’ll be the perfect weapon) but then he takes pity. He’s left the pizza in the kitchen. The house is silent. He kneels down beside Harry, lets himself into the shower, then places a hand on his shoulder. 

“Harry? Wake up,” he coaxes. “Come on.” He shakes him lightly, then when Harry’s only response is an extremely embarrassing snore, he struggles not to laugh and shakes him a little harder. “Rise and shine! Wake up and smell the pizza.” Sleepy Harry is both cute and amusing, and Louis feels a sweet stab of fondness in his stomach at the sight of him.

With a low, sleepy groan, Harry lifts his head and blinks blearily at him. “Uh? Wassup?” Eloquent as usual.

“Hey, sleepy,” Louis teases. “No prizes for guessing what  _you’ve_  been doing.”

“Ungh. Sleeping,” Harry grumbles. “ _That’s_ what I’ve been doing.” His eyes drift closed again and he swats Louis away. “G’way.”

“I have pizza.”

“Not interested.”

“I rented  _Titanic_ from the DVD rental place down the road.”

“Still not interested.”

Louis leans in and whispers in his ear, “I have plans for tonight which may or may not involve not watching said movie, feeding each other pizza and then having…an early night.” He nibbles Harry’s earlobe and runs his hand suggestively down Harry’s bare chest.

Cautiously, Harry opens one eye. “Might  _possibly_ be interested,” he says warily.

So then, because his knees are starting to ache on this cold, damp floor, and he really wants to eat pizza, Louis plays his ace card. “Well, I was thinking of doing you a favour tonight…if you get up off this floor right now, maybe I could be persuaded to…” He makes an obscene gesture with his tongue, letting it flicker out of his mouth like a lizard’s and then making a seductive licking motion. And if that’s not enough of an incentive to have Harry’s eyes widening and him suddenly deciding that sleep isn’t such an attractive concept after all, he doesn’t know what is.

“Definitely interested,” Harry corrects himself, and he grabs Louis’ arm and hauls himself to his feet. “But be gentle with me. I’m still kind of…tender.”

Louis can’t help but smirk. “Well, if you will mess around in the shower rather than waiting for me to get home –”

“We’ve all done it,” Harry grumbles. He’s not embarrassed exactly, because he’s caught Louis in the act more than once, and he’ll either laugh it off or offer to help out. They’re by no means shy about it. But Louis’ smile is a bit too brilliant, his eyes too bright, which makes Harry suspicious, but if he asks what Louis has done it’s a sure way of never finding out, so he keeps his mouth shut.

The phone rings.

“I’ll get it,” groans Harry, neatly sidestepping around him. Louis laughs, grabs his right wrist and waves Harry’s right hand around in front of them. “Not with this hands,” he teases.

Rolling his green eyes, Harry pulls free and dryly promises, “I won’t get jizz on our phone, okay? I’ll leave that dubious pleasure to you next time I go away. Phone sex,” he elaborates when Louis looks mystified, “I know you like that.”

He dodges out of the bathroom before Louis can hit him in the balls (uncovered, they’re a tempting and easy target) and Louis calls after him, “That is such a load of bull…everyone uses their mobile for that these days; landlines are for telemarketers, and I wouldn’t try to seduce a telemarketer if you paid me.”

At that, Harry bursts out laughing, a ridiculous, uncontrollable sound that’s almost embarrassing. But Louis has always been funny. He isn’t sure why it’s still funny, but oh, it is, and he’s still grinning from ear to ear when he giddily answers the phone with a giggly “Hello?”

“Harry!” Liam hesitates for a moment before plunging on, “you sound, uh…keyed up. Are you in the middle of something? Because I can call back later –”

To Harry, Liam’s attitude towards sex will be a constant source of amusement for years to come, because while Harry would quite happily hop into a plane and splash intimate details of his love life across the sky in loopy, lurid pink skywriting, Liam believes it belongs exclusively in the bedroom, and turns shocking pink at any mention of it.

It would be very funny to moan and make heavy breathing noises down the phone, and to pretend that he and Louis  _are_ in the middle of something and he is very keyed up indeed, especially as Liam would never be able to look him in the eye again and his head would probably explode with embarrassment every time they met for the next six months. But Harry likes Liam a lot, and contrary to popular belief, he  _can_ be nice if he wants to. So he swallows his laughter, smoothes out his expression, and his composed again, almost serious, within seconds.

“I’m fine, thank you,” he says politely, and then he remembers that he’s on the phone to vestal virgin Liam Payne (who is not actually a virgin, but may as well be) naked as the day he was born and with everything roaming free, and his hand clamps down over his mouth to flatten another helpless snort of laughter. Fighting to keep a straight face, and trying not to convulse with laughter over the thought of how horrified Liam would be if he knew exactly what Harry was wearing right now, i.e. nothing, he forces out “how can I help you?” before smothering more snickers behind his hand.

If Liam wonders why Harry is being so uncharacteristically polite today, he himself is far too police to question it. “What are you doing Saturday night?”

 _Louis,_ Harry thinks, and he smirks. “I’m not really sure. We haven’t really thought about it.”

“Don’t make plans,” instructs Liam. “It’s Dani’s birthday in a few weeks and I’ve organized a party for her, and we’d love it if you and Louis would come.”

 _Does he realize he’s doing that?_ Harry wonders.  _Referring to them as ‘we’ – like they’re only one person, not a pair of sentient individuals. Not ‘_ she _’ would love it, not ‘_ I _’ would love it – ‘_ we’ _would love it. It’s a unanimous thing. How couple-y._ It takes him a few seconds to realize that he’s done the exact same thing himself mere seconds ago, and his mouth falls comically open with horror.  _Oh no…I’m not one of_ those  _guys, am I? Louis and I aren’t like that, are we? – Oh!_

The ‘we’ rings in his ears like an enormous, horrifying bell, and, aghast, he clings to the phone so hard that it makes his fingers hurt.

Dazedly, he realizes that Liam is still excitedly rattling on. “ – going to be great, we haven’t invited all that many people, I mean, you know Dani. She’s quite private, it’s just close family and a couple of friends, and I just thought of you guys, of course. Lou’s been my best friend for years, and I dunno, I just feel like I’ve known you longer than I have. You’ll come, right? It’ll be a good night.”

 _What kind of a party is_ Liam _going to organize?_ Harry thinks idly.  _Balloons? Birthday cake? Unlimited Ribena and pin the tail on the donkey?_

“Uh…”

“Aw, she’s so excited, you should see her. Bless her, she keeps talking about how it’s going to be kind of a couple thing. Her mum and dad, my mum and dad, you and Louis, Gee and Tom, Cosmo and Tina, Jean and Harvey, Eve and Mitch, Bianca and Ian, her and me, I don’t think anyone who’s going is single –”

Harry’s stomach lurches. Oh, God. He really  _is_ domesticated; he is being invited to  _couple parties_ organized by Liam Payne, the epitome of innocence and bringer of finger-food and non-alcoholic punch. And however much he loves Liam, he hasn’t set eyes upon a stuffed olive since he was about fourteen, and has no intention of ever doing so again.

If he lets his guard down, he’ll wake up one morning to find Louis with sideburns and a handlebar moustache, and they’ll wear bed socks when it was cold, and tartan slippers, and he’ll read the Financial Times every Sunday and they’ll sell the flashy silver Porsche that is the receiver of god knows how many lustful glances from men and women alike (men like flashy cars. Women like men who  _drive_  flashy cars. Simple) and exchange it for a Range Rover or a Golf or an Audi or something equally sensible. They’ll schedule bedroom activities and only have sex on Saturdays and birthdays, play Scrabble for fun, and get into arguments over chess or BBC documentaries. And all the while, Harry will slowly die inside of boredom, but never be able to bring himself to leave Louis because he lo –

 _No._ The word gets stuck, and he firmly shakes his head to dislodge it. He couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Louis because – because – oh, just  _because_ , he says to himself crossly, now focus.

The way Harry sees it, this party could be the end of everything. This could be the point where they domesticate too much, to the point of no return. This could be where they get  _boring_ , and Harry simply cannot abide the thought of that.

The solution, as he sees it, is simple: if this party could ruin what they have then there can be no question of them going. For safety’s sake, they must stay well away. Somehow, Harry doesn’t think Louis will see it quite like that.

You couldn’t pay Louis to miss any sort of party, even the sort of party that Liam might throw, and Liam has been his  best friend since before Harry was born (their mothers met whilst they were both still in nappies, a good few months before Harry came into the world). Louis would not miss Liam’s girlfriend’s birthday for the world. Even if he thought he was going to end up with a handlebar moustache.

He absolutely cannot be allowed to go to the party. Louis would not suit a handlebar moustache.

But Harry will never be able to convince him to change his mind about this! Louis will go to the party, all of the normal boring couples there will rub off on him, and things will change, and Harry won’t be able to –

Louis doesn’t know about the party.

It hits him like a punch to the stomach with the force of a speeding train;  _Louis doesn’t know._ And what Louis doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

“Actually, you know what? I’m not sure. Let me get back to you.”

Liam pauses mid excited sentence and Harry can almost  _hear_ him frowning. “Can’t you make it?”

“I’m really not sure. I’ll have to look into it.”

Crestfallen, Liam says, “Well, if you can’t make it, we can move it to the Saturday after instead? We  _so_ wanted you to be there –”

“No, that’s alright,” Harry interrupts. “We might. I need to ask him. I’ll let you know later on in the week, shall I?”

For the first time, Liam smells a rat. Maybe it’s because Harry hasn’t taken the piss out of him yet. “Are you sure you’re all right, Harry?”

“Absolutely,” says Harry airily. They could be talking about anything, which, of course, is precisely why he’s being quite so deliberately vague. Louis is behind him, his cool breath hitting Harry’s neck, ruffling the curls there. He thinks Harry doesn’t know he’s there. Harry is oh-so aware that Louis is so close, which is why he needs to put an end to this conversation right now. “Well, thank you, I’ll get back to you on that. Thanks, uh,  _kbye._ ” And then the phones is slammed down in a panic.

 _Too fast, too fast_ , he silently admonishes himself; surely Louis will know something’s up? Louis’ arms slip around his bare waist from behind, accompanied by a sigh; Harry leans back into the embrace. Louis rests his chin on Harry’s shoulder.

“Telemarketer,” Harry breathes by way of an explanation, and prays that Louis won’t have recognized the familiar buzz of Liam’s warm voice.

Apparently he hasn’t. “Vultures,” he mutters, his lips on Harry’s neck. It’s very distracting. “You get rid of ‘em?”

“Told them I’d call back another time. I won’t,” Harry clarifies.

“Disaster averted,” Louis jokes, kissing him on the shoulder. “Let’s hope that doesn’t come back to haunt you.”

“Yeah,” Harry quietly agrees.  _Yeah._


	7. Chapter 7

  
It’s getting to be a real problem that the moment he and Harry have five minutes apart, all of a sudden he can’t keep still.

Louis isn’t sure when his sanity became reliant on having a mop of curly hair and tangle of gangly limbs within close reach and a smooth, deep voice murmuring sinfully into his ear, but apparently it has, and when Harry isn’t around to anchor him safely into the realm of what his world has now become, he goes stir crazy. It’s become a dependency, almost an addiction, and every kiss, every touch, every loving look only fuels the fire that keeps building and building and burning him whenever they don’t touch. Sending him slowly insane. Harry’s lips taste like the sweetest poison that ever was. It’s not just any poison; it pushes at his weak spots and never ever rests, and he has no immunity against it because he keeps topping it up, kissing harder and holding longer and losing more and more hours of his life that tick away while he’s in Harry’s arms, and he has no control over his almost frightening desires any more. Losing contact with the curly haired boy is hardwired straight to his panic button; if the circuit breaks, he goes insane. If he can’t reach out and feel smooth skin beneath his fingertips, then his mouth goes dry and his head starts spinning and he has to get out, has to do something, his fingers start itching and his phone ends up in his hand, hovering over Zayn’s number with painful indecision as he struggles against the urge to call him and forget who he is and who Harry is and forget  _everything_ other than the mindless animal urges that used to be the only call he would ever answer to from anyone. Forget the toxic spikes of panic that live beneath his skin and emerge whenever Harry isn’t around to chase them away with his own personal poison. His smell, his sound, his taste, his touch. He’s the only antidote Louis knows, but with every cure he administers a double dose of venom  into Louis’ veins, and every day Louis needs him a little bit more just so he can function.

Now Harry is the one who’s calling him, each and every day, and Louis is there by his side like a little lapdog, eager to please and ridiculously obedient, and his disloyalty is currently the one trait he has left which isn’t reminiscent of a puppy. Perhaps that’s why he’s still obstinately holding on to it.

They’re obsessed with each other, Louis knows it, and he doesn’t know how deep Harry’s insanity is, but his own bubbles barely concealed beneath the surface, dancing in the blood in his veins and filling him with need and paranoia and desperation that he can hardly keep a handle on. He’d go to hell before he let Harry see just how insane he is, just what one idiot with a big grin and curly hair has done to him. So he plasters up the cracks in his sanity with bandages and plasters and stitches that won’t hold, and tries not to let the madness within ooze out. At least, not too obviously.

Harry’s only gone to the shops – to get some biscuits and toilet paper and a bottle of wine, you know, the essentials – but Louis can feel both his sanity and his self-restraint ebbing away by the second. He wanted to come, to take Harry’s hand and wander around Sainsburys with him and toss items into the wire basket and then spend ten minutes dwelling over the music section and scoffing at the selection of CDs, and chase each other round the aisles with trolleys and risk getting  thrown out, because shopping is boring, but everything is fun with Harry. Only they spend so much time together these days that they’re practically joined at the hip, and Louis doesn’t know what he’d do if he scared him away by being too clingy, so he always lets Harry go whenever he has plans and never asks to go – sometimes, he thinks Harry wishes he would. Pleasingly often, Harry actually asks, and he always says yes, but he wouldn’t want to make a nuisance of himself by tagging along, so he only ever goes if Harry asks him first. Today, Harry didn’t ask him.

He could recite Zayn’s number backwards and in his sleep, he’s been staring at it for so long. The numbers have wormed into his brain and are coiling behind his eyelids so that he sees the shape of them even when he closes his eyes, tormenting him. Enticing him, almost  _begging_ him to call.

Eventually, his finger stabs on the keypad – it’s Liam’s number he calls, though, because Liam is safe and Liam is innocent and Liam reminds him how to be a good guy, and even the sound of his voice is enough to make Louis feel guilty even when he hasn’t actually done anything. That’s the incentive he really needs right now. Liam will save him once again, and he won’t even know. He owes him, anyway. Liam was his undoing and his saviour all in one. Liam was the reason he and Harry found each other, Liam tied Louis down, and tied Harry to him. Everything is Liam’s fault, and everything is something Liam can fix. That’s something Louis knows from personal experience.

“Hey, Louis!” Liam doesn’t even give him a chance to say hi in return, which is unusual, because courtesy is his middle name (well, Liam Courtesy Payne  _does_ have a certain ring to it) and Louis would expect all the pleasantries to be gotten out of the way before the conversation begins, but Liam is excited, and he forgets his manners. “Excellent timing, I was just about to call you. Listen, I’m sorry to be a bother, but I really need a final answer about next week. I’m booking the venue, you see, and I just need to know if I’m doing it for this coming Saturday or the one after, if you and Harry are busy.”

Blink, blink. “Next Saturday?” Louis says stupidly. Booking the venue? Final answer? He’s missing something, he’s sure of it. Was he drunk when they had the preceding half of this conversation? Because he’s pretty sure he has no idea what the hell Liam is talking about.

“Yep. Danielle’s birthday party? I called Harry and told him all about it. He said you might be busy and he’d get back to me, but I really need an answer now.”

Louis frowns. “Harry never told me that you called.”

“Maybe he forgot,” Liam suggests. There is a pause which Louis doesn’t much like. “…Although I have texted him quite a few times since then, pushing him for an answer…”

A memory springs to mind; yesterday, when they were snuggled up on the couch and Louis’ head was in Harry’s lap for a change, and Harry was running his slender fingers through Louis’ newly arranged quiff of hair, systematically destroying  it without really paying attention to what he was doing (it was a nice role reversal, but Louis did kind of miss carding his hands through thick curls and feeling Harry purr beneath his hands) Louis felt Harry shift underneath him, his whole thigh vibrating as his phone buzzed in his pocket. Continuing to muss Lou’s hair with one hand, Harry had pulled the phone out, checked it, and then with a blank expression deleted the text after barely glancing at it.

“Who was that?”

“One of those dumb network messages,” Harry breathed, not wanting to disturb the web of stillness they’d woven around them that they were both secretly enjoying. “Wanting to remind me about freebie rewards codes, or something. Doesn’t matter.”

At the time, Louis thought nothing  of it, but now he’s starting to wonder, because Harry seems to have deleted an awful lot of texts without reading them lately, at least five within the past week, and every time he’s had a perfectly good excuse for all of them – wrong number, a drunken text from one of his college mates that he isn’t going to dignify with a response, texts from his mobile phone network or a universally sent-out school thing that doesn’t apply to him. But every time he pulls his phone out and deletes a text that he’s cast a quick glance over and then disregarded, there’s the smallest of hesitations before he tells Louis who it’s from – a hesitation that is very different from his usual problem of just speaking inordinately slowly. Afterwards, his breath always hitches a little, and his pupils balloon like he’s high or turned on – more than once Harry has dropped his phone with the text newly deleted and his excuse hovering on his lips, and he’s had a huge hard-on seconds later. Louis has always attributed it to him being a horny, hormonal teenager, but…

He drags himself back to the matter in hand; the conversation that he’s supposed to be having. Analysing Harry’s weird behaviour can wait. “When is it?”

Liam gives him the date and Louis writes it on the back of his hand, allowing himself another little frown because he and Harry have nothing whatsoever planned for anywhere around that date, and Harry isn’t the type to surprise him because he knows that nine times out of ten Louis hates surprises. Unless they involve Harry leaping out of cupboards and ravaging him like a rampant sex beast, or cooking for him when he doesn’t expect it, or bringing him breakfast in bed every once in a while.

“I’m sorry, Liam, I can’t think why Harry wouldn’t have told me.” It’s the truth; he  _really_ can’t. Harry likes Liam, and he likes Danielle, and he likes parties and he likes showing off and getting dressed up with Louis on his arm, and letting everyone see exactly who Louis belongs to. Usually, in their relationship Louis is the one who calls the shots, but when they’re in public Harry likes to make out that he’s in charge – maybe it’s some kind of ego thing, because he’s taller and a bit larger and stronger and he has to dip his head for Louis to kiss him and it might look a bit weird seeing the smaller man boss him about, even though it works perfectly well in private and they’ve had a lot of great sex that way (Louis is excellent at the whole dominance thing). Louis doesn’t mind it, in fact he thinks it’s quite sweet, so he lets Harry nuzzle his neck and nip love-bites into his skin and yank him a little closer if anyone looks at him, and he doesn’t mind at all if a little spark of jealousy flashes like lightning in Harry’s green eyes, because it’s nice to be wanted and even nicer to feel Harry tensing beside him and drawing him in even closer to show who owns him, to prove that Louis is  _his_. Sometimes, Louis has even seen him glower across the room at people whose eyes are almost falling out of their head because they’re staring so lustfully at Louis in all his tight-trousered glory (Louis basks in the attention, really, he’s not ashamed to admit it) – sometimes, on rare occasions, Harry will mutter “Mine” and steer Louis away from the offending parties, and oh, if Louis doesn’t love that. He gets off on it, not that he’d ever admit it. He thinks Harry does too, if he’s honest; thinks he might have a bit of a jealousy kink. They don’t mention it, though.

But the truth of the matter is that parties are where Harry comes into his own; he’s in his element when there’s a room full of people around him. Well, they met at a party after all, didn’t they? So Louis can’t understand why Harry would keep this party from him. He can’t understand it at all.

“He did back off a whole lot when I mentioned that it was a couple thing,” muses Liam.

Louis can’t see why that would make much of a difference – they’re  _in_  a couple, after all. “Oh?”

“Yeah, I think he kind of started freaking out at about that point, really. He’d been pretty normal up to that point – the moment I mentioned that it was really a couple party and how sweet Dani thought that was, he went all weird on me and started saying he wasn’t sure if you could make it…” Realizing how awful that sounds, Liam instantly stops. “Am I getting him in trouble? Because I didn’t want to start anything –”

“No, of course not,” Louis assures him, “don’t be daft, of course you’re not. I expect it just slipped his mind, like you said. You know what a scatterbrain he is.” But before he can make himself change the subject, a rather worrying thought creeps up his spine and forces itself down his throat, and then comes bubbling up again like vomit; he can’t hold it back, and the question bursts out of him like a waterfall, burning a little on the way out with unease. “Can I just ask, when did you tell him about this? Like…when did it start?”

He waits for Liam to think, swears he can almost hear Liam thoughtfully tapping his chin like he always does when he’s lost in thought. See the pucker of his mouth and eyebrows as he considers. “I think it would have been about a fortnight ago.”

A fortnight ago is around the time when Harry first started acting a bit strangely; Louis knows that because he’s been keeping track of how long it’ll take him to return to normal. But that’s when things kind of got a bit weird. When he mislaid his favourite shirt and Harry swore he didn’t know where it was, but he found it carefully folded up underneath their bed surrounded by dust bunnies and old socks, and Harry swore he had no idea how it had got there, but the sleeves were folded with a precision that Louis can never be bothered with and Harry has a compulsion to always carry out. Harry’s stopped leaving his phone lying around and always has it carefully tucked into the pocket of his Chinos or jeans, no matter how tight they are and how hard it must be pressing against his leg and how uncomfortable it must be, even though Louis would never go rifling through Harry’s phone anyway. He keeps going to visit mysterious friends and getting back far too quickly, and a perfectly good reason is never far from his lips, but he always seems flushed and excited for reasons that Louis can’t quite identify. And when they’re alone together, his hands always wander. They never were able to get enough of each other, but Harry’s sexual appetites have seemed particularly insatiable of late.

It’s nothing Louis can put his finger on, really; nothing adds up to a reasonable conclusion. The almost paranoid way Harry’s phone is glued to his hand these days and the visits to so many friends Louis has never met could suggest that Harry might be swanning off to a mysterious lover and cheating on him, but there are no mysterious receipts left lying around and Harry’s never really out long enough for any secret trysts, and that wouldn’t explain why he’s so keen on sex lately. And the jumper hiding…Louis really can’t understand that at all. It’s just  _weird_ , and Harry is weird, but this is a new kind of weird, and he’s not exactly sure what he’s supposed to do with it. Not sure what Harry wants from him. Does he  _want_ to be caught out? What exactly is he up to? If Louis is going to catch him doing something, he probably ought to know what it is first.

“A fortnight,” he says slowly.

“Yup, I think so.”

“Okay, thanks. Well, we’ll definitely be there,” Louis promises, which is probably dangerous because he has no idea what Harry’s problem is with this party, but maybe if he had an issue with it he should have brought it to Louis’ attention rather than sneaking around behind his back. He’s upset and a little pissed off that Harry has lied to him, and to Liam, and maybe it’s spiteful to disregard Harry’s feelings completely, but right now he doesn’t care much. “Thanks, Liam.”

“But what about Harry?”

“What about him?” It comes out a little too sharply and he follows it with a sigh. “He’ll be alright. We’ll talk it over. It’s all just a misunderstanding.”

“Oh, okay, then.” Louis clearly doesn’t want to talk, and Liam isn’t going to press the subject. “Well, I’ll call you back later then, shall I?”

“Sure,” agrees Louis. He hangs up.

Once again, he’s painfully alone without another voice chattering away beside him. His fingers are loosely curled around his phone and he has to consciously remind himself not to drop it. In the kitchen, the tap is dripping, fat droplets of water plopping onto the bottom of the sink because the washer needs fixing, and the kitchen clock ticks too loudly, which is something he’s been noticing rather a lot lately, and he places his phone on the kitchen counter, walks into the living room and sits down on the sofa. He says nothing, because there’s no one to talk to, but his head is spinning and thoughts are whirling giddily around inside it, and he’s tapping his thigh with one finger in an almost automatic motion to keep himself calm.

Suspecting that there’s something wrong with Harry is one thing – discovering that Harry has been unashamedly lying to him is another, and it makes Louis feel strangely sick even though he’s been thinking that something isn’t right for a while now. He doesn’t understand what possible motives Harry could have for lying to him.

Then he thinks – really thinks. He thinks of Harry’s glittering green eyes that seem to dance a little brighter at the oddest moments, almost dangerously bright. He thinks of how sometimes he’ll wake up in the middle of the night to find Harry staring at the ceiling with the oddest expression on his face, refusing to answer, lost in another world that not even Louis can breach, and how there’s something that keeps Harry separate from everyone else, makes him different. He thinks about Harry’s secrets and wonders how many of them there might actually be, bearing in mind that of all the people Harry’s let inside his head, Louis has delved him the deepest and sometimes he feels like there’s nothing more to discover and other times he feels like he’s barely scratched the surface. It’s scary. He hates glancing at the boy with the curly hair and feeling like he’s living with a stranger, like he’s given his heart to some random beautiful boy and he doesn’t know if he’s ever going to get it back. One good flex of Harry’s fingers and that heart would be crushed. The heart is most definitely a fragile thing.

Even though he’s sitting down, he’s not sure if he can hold himself up. It feels like he might crash and burn any second. He lies down instead, eyes glued to the ceiling, fingers drumming relentlessly on his thigh, thinking, thinking, thinking. There’s a decision he has to make, and he has to make it fast. Tear everything apart and admit that there’s something behind Harry’s eyes that he doesn’t like, risk unleashing it and having Harry spin out of control? If Harry doesn’t have to hide behind a smile and a dirty mouth any more then he might give in to the crazy virus that’s wrapped itself around his neck and is slowly strangling him and he’s gurgling and suffocating and laughing –

 _Now who’s going crazy, Louis?_  He asks himself.  _You’re blowing this way out of proportion._ But Liam did tell him that Harry would be more than a match for him, and lately there’s been a definite spark of crazy in his eyes. An argument would be like petrol beside an open flame. It would consume everything and leave them screaming at each other and clawing each other to shreds with the shadow of the three-word phrase that neither of them can force out.

The trouble is that he and Harry trust each other, which he isn’t used to, and they need each other, which he is even less used to, and the feelings Louis has for him are even more intense than the co-dependency that he had to acknowledge a while back because it was simply undeniable. All of these things mean that Louis’ old natural instincts – forget the fight and choose flight instead – are nigh on impossible, because he could so much as leave Harry behind as one of his own limbs. Needing a person fundamentally for survival purposes, because he cannot function without them, is a frightening new thing to Louis; he’s been independent for years, taking care of his sisters and always being the strong big brother and never letting anyone else in. But he allowed the tiniest chink to form in his armour and someone slipped through, chained themselves around the heart he always thought was closed to everyone but the people he consciously allowed inside, and refused to let go. Now he’s trapped and terrified and feeling like he might drown or suffocate because he’s afraid to stay and incapable of leaving and he’s and panicking over what on earth might be going through Harry’s head right now and  _hi honey, I’m home_

Harry is home, and everything is simultaneously ten times worse and ten times better and this is a prime example of how messed up he is right now.

He lies flat on his back and closes his eyes, and he waits. He hears Harry’s keys clattering onto the kitchen table as he comes padding through. Then he hears the sofa creak and feels it sink slightly as Harry plants a hand on either side of him and slowly leans in, his breath ghosting over Louis’ collarbones. It takes a phenomenal amount of effort for Louis to stop his lips from twitching into a grin, but he manages it. His breath doesn’t even catch as Harry leans right in close, pressing their cheeks together, gently nuzzling him. He bites down on his tongue to keep quiet, and his fingers curl into the upholstery of the sofa beneath him, digging fiercely in to the material as he reminds himself not to make a sound, to barely move.

The sound of Harry’s breathing might be enough to lull him to actual sleep; the heavy warmth of his body is slowly making Louis drift into a lovely cosy warm place and he’s in actual danger of falling asleep. It’s not his fault. Such close proximity as this brings one of two things; sleep is one, sex is the other. Miraculously, he’s not thinking of sex right now; sleep is first and foremost on his mind and it fits in nicely with his whole facade of sleeping as instead of fighting to keep his eyes shut, he’s now not sure if he can open them.

The tip of Harry’s nose touches his cheek. It’s cold, and Louis  _almost_ winces,  _almost_ ruins it, but he manages to stay motionless apart from the steady rhythm of his breathing, and he can almost hear Harry’s frown. Then he swears he hears the succulent sound of Harry’s teeth digging in to his lower lips as he bites it, and God, it’s sexy, and the thought almost makes him squirm with longing. All of a sudden, instead of fighting to keep his breathing steady, he’s struggling to breathe at all.

“I know you’re awake,” Harry murmurs. “You’re fooling no one.” It comes out all low and rough and sexy, and gravelly as if he’s been gargling rocks, and  _ooh_ , Louis  _definitely_ likes _that._

When he doesn’t get a response, Harry decides to press the issue by straddling Louis and sitting on his stomach, which almost provokes an embarrassing grunt, but Louis is kind of used to the weight and the warmth is hardly unpleasant, so he waits for Harry to shift himself into a comfortable position and relaxes completely, surprisingly comfortable with the idea of being Harry’s human chair. The younger boy leans so far forward that he’s in serious danger of overbalancing and toppling right over, so far forward that his curls tickle Louis’ forehead and he wonders what it must feel like to have the warm weight of them adorning your head all day long.

“I know you’re awake, Lou,” repeats Harry. But he sounds worried. “Lou. Louis.”

The urge to open his eyes and dispel Harry’s anxiety is strong, but the desire to scare the crap out of him is even stronger, so Louis lets Harry lean in so closely that their noses touch, lets him hold Louis’ wrist and check for a pulse, lets him rest his ear against Louis’ chest to feel it rising and falling beneath him and try to listen  to his heartbeat. He oozes concern and he’s clearly worried now, and Louis doesn’t have to be patient for much longer.

He leaves it a few more seconds, enough for Harry to really start panicking, because Louis is a light sleeper and experience tells him that he should have woken up way before now. The warmth of him should tell Harry that everything is okay, but apparently it doesn’t. Louis counts twenty seconds in his head, fighting a grin all the while, waits for Harry to slide a little off his chest and sit up, still leaning nervously over him, and then he sits bolt upright so fast that their foreheads slam together and shouts “BOO!”

Harry shrieks – literally shrieks – and falls backwards so fast that Louis has to quickly snag his wrist and yank him forwards to prevent him from falling right off the sofa. With his green eyes wide open in shock and his mouth opened even wider, he looks absolutely hilarious, and Louis howls with laughter, shaking with the force of it. It takes a few moments for what just happened to really sink in, and then Harry cries out in outrage and starts smacking his chest with the flat of his hands, flushing bright red with embarrassment.

“Oh! You tosser, I thought there was something wrong! Oh, I hate you!” His hands slap relentlessly down on Louis’ chest, but there’s no force behind the blows and they just make Louis laugh harder.

“You don’t,” he gasps, wiping at his eyes, which are wet with tears of mirth. “Oh my god, I can’t believe it. You  _squealed_!”

“I did  _not_  squeal!” Harry squeaks. “You’d better not tell anyone about that!”

“I’m going to tell  _everyone_ ,” Louis threatens wickedly.

“No, no, no!” chants Harry. “I won’t let you!”

“And how exactly do you intend to stop me, Harold?”

Harry shuffles forward and gets into a somewhat more commanding position on Louis’ stomach, then grabs one of Louis’ wrists in each large hand like fetters, holding him still. He leans forward, nudges Louis with the tip of his cold nose, whispers, “I can make not doing so totally worth your while.”

“Oh, you can, can you?” Louis tilts his head and accepts three quick kisses that make his lips tingle, then leans laughing back, bringing his lips out of range, and tells the ceiling, “that sounds an awful lot like bribery to me.”

Since his mouth isn’t within easy reach, Harry kisses his neck instead. “Oh, does it? Perhaps that’s because it is.”

“Disgusting. Someone should lock you away, you criminal mastermind.”

“Criminal mastermind, huh? You like that? I sense a kinky role-play fetish struggling to emerge, Tomlinson…it would be rude to deny you…you want me to be a criminal? I can do that.”

Well, that does sound very nice, and Louis has shivers going down his spine at the very thought of it, but maybe not today. Not when he can see for himself that Harry’s eyes are bright with that excitement that so worries him, and when he knows that Harry has been lying to him and he’s about to treat like with like and feed a pack of lies to Harry’s face, too.

“Another time, maybe,” he says lightly, or as lightly as he can, given the situation and his current state of mind, and he gives Harry a gentle push. “Come on, up you get. I’m starving.

Since when has Louis turned down an offer of sex in any form? That’s his first mistake. That’s the reason Harry is on to him from the start. That’s the reason his green eyes narrow the tiniest bit and Louis swallows and feels himself start to panic, and he wriggles out from underneath him and hurries into the kitchen to start clinking spoons and making himself coffee. The silence between them is filled with accusations and Louis determinedly rattles off a mental chorus of  _everything is fine, everything is fine, you’re imagining things, everything is fine._ He punctuates it with kitchen sounds; the kettle boiling and the fridge opening and closing and the scratchy sound of coffee powder hitting the bottom of the mug. He hums a little tune to himself and then remembers that Harry hates that song, so he quickly shuts up.

Entering the kitchen, Harry slides his arms around Louis’ waist from behind and feels him flinch, which kind of hurts his feelings. Tense, Louis tries to lean back into his embrace but his whole body is stiff, and Harry almost angrily releases him and bangs a second mug on to the counter, beginning to spoon too much coffee out to make himself a drink, too.

The water pours and slops over the edge of his mug because Louis’ hand shakes when he pours it in. He’s more careful with Harry’s, watches him put too much sugar in, resists the urge to tell him that he’ll rot his teeth and it’ll taste too sickly sweet anyway. They don’t quite look at each other as Harry raises the mug to his lips and sips, and Louis opts for blowing gently on his own, waiting for it to cool. The mutual silence becomes strangely comfortable after a moment or so, far more comfortable than trying to force conversation. After a while, Louis rests a hand on Harry’s hip and his fingers bunch in the loose material of his shirt. He leans his head to the side, rests it on Harry’s shoulder, leans against him and sighs.

“Sorry.”

“What for?”

A one-shouldered shrug. “Weirdness.” Then he wriggles more closely into Harry’s side. “I’m just tired tonight, that’s all. Feeling a bit…” He makes a vague gesture. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” says Harry. “We all have those days.”

Louis kisses him quickly, and his lips taste like too-sweet coffee. It almost makes Louis feel guilty, knowing that Harry has just kissed his lying lips – but then he remembers that Harry’s lips are coated with lies too, and he feels better for thinking that. Which is messed up, really.

(What he doesn’t know is that to Harry, those lies taste far sweeter on his lips than all the sugar.)

~*~

The day of Liam’s party creeps up on him when he least expects it, and he still hasn’t told Harry. He pushed it to the back of his mind and covered it in a camouflage layer of distractions; work, sex, food, his sisters, the way Harry’s hair smells, that groan he makes when he first hauls himself out of bed in the morning, the supple stretch of his body, aiming for a promotion at work that he’ll never get, doing the weekly shop, playing with the magnets on the fridge so they spell out his and Harry’s names. It’s all silly stuff that he does to keep his hands and mind busy, but now the day has come, and the protective layer has been ripped away like a plaster off a sore, and the scab has opened. Louis is scared.

He goes to work. He smiles winningly at customers, but every time the door opens he jumps out of his skin, almost like he expects a tangle of dark curls and expanse of alabaster skin to be lounging in the doorway. He provides excellent customer service, but flinches at the ring of the phone, looking at it with an appalled expression like it’s going to eat him. His finger shakes as he stabs out a hasty text message to ask Liam what time they should be there, and when Liam replies “7.40” his mind starts frantically figuring out exactly how long he has to think of a way to get Harry to a party that he was so eager to avoid that he pretended it never existed.

Five hours and twenty minutes. He leaves work at four. Which means that he has two and a bit relatively undisturbed hours to  think of a battle plan, and just over three hours to put that plan into practice. He’s been in far tighter scrapes than this and squeezed through with a grin on his face; he can manage this. It’s just going to be a little more tense than usual.

When his shift ends, he’s torn between whether he ought to rush or dawdle, because rushing gives him more time and dawdling means he can procrastinate. The sensible side of him tells him that procrastination is not the way to go, so he stuffs his hands into his pockets and hurries home with his shoulders hunched and his head lowered, the wind viciously ripping his neatly styled quiff into shreds of hair desperately clinging to his head that in no way resemble any kind of hairstyle, pinching at his cheeks to stain them salmon pink, and seeping in through the stitches of his jacket (it’s seen better days; it’s the comfiest jacket he owns and still doesn’t look too shabby, but its ability to protect him from the elements leaves something to be desired). By the end he gets home, he’s frozen solid, but he hasn’t fallen over a pair of Harry’s shoes lying in the doorway because there aren’t any (it’s a constant source of amusement to Harry that even though he kicks his shoes off in the exact same place every single day, Louis still manages to fall over them every time he steps through the front door, so he always makes sure to leave them there when he gets home and laugh uproariously when Louis trips and falls on his face. He’s lovely like that) which means that Harry isn’t home yet. The plan is panning out nicely.

A little red light on the phone in the hallway is flashing. For a moment Louis wonders whether it might be about to explode and be kindly warning him of this fact, but then he remembers how unlikely that is and that unexpected red lights do not automatically mean danger or that he broke something, and he picks it up and dials the answer-phone. Harry’s warm voice spills out, wrapping around him like a warm blanket; he inhales it like it’s steam or a warm drink and it heats him from the inside out, as well as the outside in. Harry announces that he’ll be back around seven, he’s just out with some mates, and if Louis wants him to get anything in while he’s in town, he should call him back. Louis doesn’t want anything (actually, Louis would quite like a packet of biscuits, but he’ll ruin the intrigue of the evening if he calls now) so he puts the phone down, strips off and slips into the shower.

The shower steams him and turns all of his skin as flushed and pink of his cheeks. Harry’s shampoo is on the side, and Louis happens to know that Harry loves it when Louis uses his hair-care products because it makes them smell the same and the possessive side of Harry enjoys that little tie between them, another subtle little thing that screams “mine” to anyone who cared to get close enough to smell them. So he squeezes a generous amount into his hands and lathers his hair thoroughly, washing it with vigour that a hairdresser would be proud of. He uses his own soap, though, and when he steps out and towels himself dry, he sprays himself liberally with his own Lynx. Harry will probably borrow it anyway; he likes it better than his own. (Louis often wants to know why he doesn’t just buy the same brand, if he prefers it, but there are some questions that he may never be able to answer.)

Thankfully, the shirt Harry loves him to wear isn’t in the wash, and miraculously it’s been ironed and is hanging neatly in the wardrobe, so Louis buttons it up with a flourish and brings his tightest pair of skinny jeans, specifically designed to cut off the circulation to his brain and so tight that he practically has to cut himself out of them when he wants to take them off, but they show the outline of absolutely everything, and Harry loves them. He takes extra care with his hair when he fixes it into a quiff, and then brushes his teeth and gargles mouthwash and sprays more Lynx over himself just to add to the effect. This takes a surprising amount of time; it’s five to seven by the time he lays down all of his materials and checks out every angle of himself in the mirror. He’s even opened a new packet of socks because Harry always moans about his bare feet, and scrubbed up his converse to leave the toes startling white. Then Louis heads into the living room, strategically arranges himself with stretched out limbs and one hand behind his head, and waits.

Harry is a minute late. But the sound of jangling keys drifts up the hallway and the door opens and he comes staggering in laden with plastic bags that he places beside the door and then breathlessly announces, “Honey, I’m home!” his customary greeting these days. Then his head pokes around the doorframe, painted with a blazing grin, and he asks playfully “Did you miss me?” When he catches sight of Louis, his eyes widen and his mouth falls open. It takes him a while to have the presence of mind to close it, and Louis has to fight not to grin and to keep the smouldering expression on his face. “Oh,” Harry says softly.

His legs look a little shaky as he crosses the room, leans over him and appraises him for a minute or so, his eyes flickering from where the black denim of Louis’ jeans cling to his calves, then up to his hips where the shirt has ridden up due to the angle he’s lying at and a tantalizing sliver of tanned skin is visible. Roving over his collarbones, flickering over his cheeks and his nose and then his hair, and eventually Harry meets his eyes and he looks a little shell-shocked.

“Draw me like one of your French girls,” Louis says in a low, seductive voice, looking from underneath his eyelashes at him. He manages to hold the serious expression for all of ten seconds, and then he snorts and has to clap a hand over his mouth to stifle it.

Harry laughs too, a lovely, sunny sound, but he still looks a little bit stunned. He drops to his knees and trails his mouth over Louis’ collarbones. “What’s brought this on, hmm?” he questions, and his thumb strokes the slender bones of Louis’ wrist. “Not that I’m complaining, but you don’t usually make this much effort. What have I done. Have you broken something?” he demands.

Louis doesn’t answer him; he can’t think of a suitable excuse. Instead, he bites down on his lower lip, and then twists his head at an uncomfortable angle so that he can catch Harry’s lips between his own, remove them from his collarbones and keep them from asking any more difficult questions. Harry doesn’t seem at all objectionable to the idea; he gives a little laugh and then tilts his head to make the position a little more bearable for Louis, and when his own becomes uncomfortable, he grabs Louis by the wrist and hauls him up off the sofa, breaking the kiss for a moment but swiftly beginning another one. He follows it with several more fleeting kisses, and then his arms wind around Louis’ neck, slide down; he runs eager hands across his chest and slid them down to his waist. Louis grabs two fistfuls of his hair and allows himself a moment of weakness; one quick roll of his hips against Harry’s, just for a bit of friction. The gasp that slips out in response to that only makes Harry groan more eagerly, and his left hand starts fumbling with Louis’ fly whilst his right creeps up inside Louis’ shirt and Harry’s nails raked passionately down his stomach.

Harry’s sinful, lying lips wander unhindered across the smooth column of his throat and leave little damp glistening patches of skin, although Louis is careful to lean a little away from him whenever the nips got too fierce so that his skin won’t bruise livid purple. Ordinarily, the idea of Harry marking his territory on Louis’ neck would have pleased him, but if they are going to be going out before all too long, he really feels he ought to be presentable – being adorned with a necklace of bruises around his jugular probably contravenes that. Louis gives a little gasp as cold, slender hands start trying to find a way into his stupidly tight jeans, hardly the best thing to wear for easy access no matter how fantastic they made his legs look, and Harry groans in frustration. His hands are rather large, and between Louis’ legs and the tight denim, there’s very little room left for anything else – even air. Abandoning the jeans for now, Harry growls and returns his attention to Louis’ stomach, his chest, his hands are everywhere and his lips are everywhere and his tongue is everywhere and the warm heat of his body is wiping Louis’ brain clean like a cloth swiping across a whiteboard, obliterating everything that was there before. A pulse beats fiercely in both his chest and his boxers, jumping in his neck to meet to Harry’s lips, tattooing a bruise on the inside of his oesophagus. He estimates that it’ll take about two more minutes before he’s rendered completely insensible and Harry will be throwing him on to the bed while he spouts incomprehensible gibberish and Harry laughs that wicked, dirty little laugh and yeah, Louis probably shouldn’t think about that dirty laugh right now because the thought of that combined with the rake of Harry’s hands down his chest is threatening the necessity of a change of boxers if he doesn’t cool down pretty quick, and these jeans are going to be hell to get off. It’ll take hours to struggle out of them now and he  _really_ doesn’t have time for that.

The way Louis sees it, he now has two options: he can let this turn of events reach its inevitable conclusion; he can let Harry hurl him to the ground and ravage him like a beast and they can both turn into a hot sweaty mess of limbs and groans and Liam can shove the stupid party up his arse and Louis won’t even  _try_ to lie plausibly later on; he’ll look at Liam with a kind of smirk on his face which spells out his preoccupation in giant, neon pink sparkly letters, and he can see Liam look horribly disappointed and feel meaningless and basically act like a kicked puppy for the next few weeks, and quite rightly so. Or he can push Harry away and maybe they’ll manage to get to this dumb party before someone eats all the vol-au-vents.

Option one sounds pretty fucking great.

He closes his eyes, leans into the warmth of Harry’s mouth – and Liam’s big brown eyes swim pleadingly in the darkness behind his eyelids, like someone painted him there. Well, Louis would be lying if he said that being beseechingly stared at by a boy who bears more than a slight resemblance to a puppy doesn’t kill the mood a little bit.

His hands close around Harry’s wrists, and he pulls them out from underneath his shirt. Harry moans and burrows his face into Louis’ neck and makes another attempt to pull his jeans down, even starts pawing at the buttons of his own, but Louis makes coaxing noises and tugs him away – he can’t quite grab both of Harry’s wrists in one hand the way Harry can with him, but he makes a pretty good attempt – and then he shoves Harry back a little so he can look at him properly. He looks like a flushed, hot mess; lips swollen, hair messed up, eyes wild. Louis doesn’t know what he himself looks like, but he must look pretty good, because Harry whines, really  _whines_  from somewhere deep in the back of his throat, and Louis almost knocks him to the floor and starts ripping his clothes off there and then, because  _Christ._ Harry. He has to grab the arm of the sofa with one hand to steady himself 

“Lou,” Harry groans. “Please. Want you. Need you.  _Now._ ” His voice is low and rough and needy and it hits Louis’ eardrums in the most delicious, desirable way, dragging down his spine and making him shiver. He meets Harry’s eyes and they look a little crazed, but in a good way. The kind of way that almost shatters his self-restraint entirely.

 _Oh, God._ “Later, sweet,” Louis says gently, hoping that his own voice doesn’t betray his barely concealed lust, because if Harry senses that he has a chance of turning this back around then he’ll try it, and Louis isn’t sure his willpower can take that. He has to be assertive. “Not now.”

Advancing on him, getting all up in his personal space, Harry lets their foreheads touch and glowers right at him. His tongue flickers out to wet his lips and his hands close around Louis’ biceps and squeeze. He’s playing the aggressive, dominant role beautifully, and Louis likes it an awful lot more than he should. He files away a mental note that they need to do something constructive with Harry’s alpha-male tendencies later.

“Give me one reason why  _not_  right now,” demands Harry, “and make it a good one, or I swear, I’m pinning you against that wall right now and by the time I’m through with you, you won’t remember your own  _name._ ”

Louis shivers, has to fight to control himself. Then he remembers the lies, and that hardens his resolve, and possibly his expression. Taking a step back is easy; Harry is too taken aback to stop him, and Louis feels triumphant, back in control of the situation. Tapping Harry on the nose in a way that’s acceptably teasing but borders on patronizing, he says “Babe, we’ve got a party to go to. Get in the shower and get changed. I want everyone to see you and think about what a lucky sod I am to have you on my arm…” To make sure that Harry won’t argue, he dips in and nibbles a little bit on Harry’s earlobe, and smiles to himself when Harry has to grab hold of him for support.

Nodding weakly, Harry starts heading for the bathroom, wobbling a little, gripping Louis’ shoulder for support and visibly staggering when he lets go. An onlooker could be forgiven for thinking that he was drunk – or even high, judging by his blown out pupils. He’s a state, and Louis has done that to him, and he’s pretty damn proud of that. He wasn’t just employing a ridiculous amount of flattery when he said he wanted everyone to see Harry on his arm, but truthfully, he’d just as happily parade Harry down the street like this, let everyone see just how thoroughly Louis has ruined him, just how wrecked he is and with so very little effort on Louis’ part. Louis wants to order him around and see him jump at his every command, almost as much as he wants Harry to boss  _him_ around. He wants everyone to know that Harry is his, and he is Harry’s, and he wants to see their eyes fill with jealousy and then he wants to drag Harry down and kiss him until neither of them can breathe any more, and he wants to feel the envious stares of hundreds of strangers burning into his back.

As an afterthought, Harry pauses in the doorway of the bathroom and asks, “Whose party is it?”

Louis has followed him; he holds the door for a few moments and scans Harry’s face. Then he bites the bullet, drops the bombshell, takes the plunge.

“Liam’s.”

He quickly shuts the door in Harry’s face, trapping him in the bathroom so that he doesn’t have to see Harry’s reaction, but he does see a look of abject horror flit briefly across Harry’s face before the door slams shut and seals him in, a barrier between them that Louis needs to compose himself. He buries his face in his hands.

_Jesus._


	8. Chapter 8

They’ve been dancing around each other on tenterhooks all night, terrified of each other and yet determined to put on a united front of  _everything’s okay_ for the other party guests, and for Danielle and Liam. Ever since they walked in, they’ve been acting, which is easier for the both of them than the truth. The truth is scary; it’s almost as if they’re running away from it together, hand in hand.

There’s music on, and they’re dancing, but with every twirl that takes him away from Harry, Louis breathes a short sigh of relief, and every time Harry snatches him back again and their bodies collide, they both flinch and Louis looks down. He’s scared of what he’ll see in Harry’s eyes. Neither of them can dance particularly well; they’re okay, really, but it doesn’t help much that they’re not looking at each other and Louis is very, very drunk, drunk enough to fall over his own feet, drunk enough that he can’t quite see straight and Harry’s face is blurry and yet he just wants another glass, no, a bucket, no, a  _swimming pool_  full of alcohol that he can dive right into and drown himself in, because he can’t leave Harry’s side for a second and yet when he’s with him, he can’t breathe.

Harry hasn’t had a drink yet, and he doesn’t intend to. Alcohol is dangerous; it loosens tongues and unlocks lips and rips all of your secrets out of you and pins them up on the washing line, writes them across the sky with giant sparklers, screams them into a megaphone linked to every speaker in the world. Harry has a hell of a lot of secrets. That’s an awful lot of broadcasting.

Louis has no such qualms. He drinks and he dances and he’s too rough and his grip on Harry’s hand is painfully tight. He has a huge grin plastered across his face, he hasn’t left Harry’s side all evening and he’s so close and so warm and it’s almost suffocating, his constant presence, but every time they dance and Louis spins away from him Harry is the one snagging his hand, reeling him back in, yanking him close. Harry is the one who whisks nibbles off the table when they stagger past and pops them into Louis’ mouth without making eye contact. Harry is the one who hauls them up for karaoke, Harry is the one who introduces them to all and sundry and makes sure everyone at that party will never forget their names, Harry is the one who needs them to keep burning bright because now that they’re on fire, he needs to hold on to this heat for as long as he can before it burns out.

Louis is not okay. His laughter is too loud, he’s shaking, he has no appetite, he can’t see straight and he isn’t sure if his vision is blurry because he’s drunk so much or because he’s holding back tears. Together they’ve been building their own little world, on foundations of giggles and silly behaviour and making the dint in the wall behind the bed where the headboard bangs against it a little bit deeper every night, only now that world is falling apart, Louis is only just beginning to realize how fragile it was. They might as well have built it on sand, on a paper-thin layer of glass, on dreams or wishes. Louis keeps smiling and singing and his arm stays around Harry’s neck, playing the part of a half of the happy couple, but his eyes stay too bright with tears that he refuses to let fall and he knows he’s only biding his time until what’s left of their world crumbles and they’re both standing on a smoking pile of lies and secrets and unsaid words.

They should never have gone out. They’re both far too messed up.

He’s heard all about it, that frightening word that begins with L and ends with E and has all the connotations of a lifetime of commitment and friendship and need and lust and longing and happiness and sadness and life and being tied to something because it’s your own personal life-preserver crammed in between those two letters. He’s laughed at all the clichés in the world;  _he’s my world, he’s my sunshine, he completes me._  Finally, the last one is starting to make sense to him. But whereas for most people, their other half finds them and they end up each being half of the same jigsaw puzzle: clean, pretty, perfectly matched. With his and Harry’s puzzle, some kid was careless when putting them away and their puzzle pieces mingled together and now they’re both a ridiculous, disproportionate mess of pieces that won’t detach, no matter how hard they pull. And pulling  _hurts._

Twirling him around one more time, Harry yanks him forward and their chests collide. He looks Louis in the eyes for the first time that evening – his irises are mossy green and filled with both panic and anger – and Louis feels the first stirrings of alcohol-induced nausea roiling in his stomach. Please,  _please_ let him not puke on Harry. Their relationship is hanging by a thread as substantial as a strand of a cobweb anyway; if he throws up on Harry’s shirt, they’ll _so_ be done. He doesn’t think Harry would dump him in front of all these people; he’s too much of a gentleman for that, party animal or no, but having Harry mop him up and smooth his hair and drive him home, and tuck him up in their bed only to kick him out again the moment his hangover has cleared the next morning would be even worse.

“We need to talk.”

“No we don’t.” Louis spins around, the song changes, and all of a sudden they’re slow dancing, Harry supporting him from behind while they sway together. It does nothing for Louis’ nausea, but it calms him a little, so he thinks they’d probably better keep doing it. He leans his head back, rests it on Harry’s shoulder, feels curls tickling his cheek and ear and jaw and closes his eyes.

“Yes, we do,” Harry whispers against his cheek. He kisses him on the jaw, and Louis isn’t sure whether he’s keeping up appearances or just can’t help himself. It could be both. “We can’t carry on like this. You’re a mess, and I’m losing my mind, and people are going to notice. We have to talk this through, Louis, you know we do.”

Clinging to him, Louis resists the urge to wipe his clammy forehead. “Not here, not now. I can’t.”

“What are you so scared of?” Harry nuzzles his neck. “So you dragged me to a party. I lied to you about it first. I pretended I didn’t know a thing about it, I never said a word about it to you. I’d say it was pretty clear who’s in the wrong here.”

“You don’t know what I’ve done.”

“That’s funny! That’s a good one, Lou, really.” Harry gave a little snort of laughter. “What _you’ve_ done? I’ve barely said a truthful word to you in weeks. I have some kind of compulsion to lie to you. It turns me on. There, I said it! Lying to you makes me want to have sex. How sick and twisted is that?”

Louis laughs too; a horrible laugh that’s too high pitched and makes his chest ache. He closes his eyes again and when Harry turns him around more slowly this time, he stretches up on his toes and rests his chin on the younger boy’s shoulder instead. They shuffle slowly back and forth for a while, and his voice cracks when he says, “Not as sick as I am.” He licks his lips, swallows. “Harry, do we have to have this conversation here? Now? I don’t want to ruin Danielle’s birthday. Liam worked so hard to organize this, I won’t let us spoil it with our issues. That’s not fair.”

“Newsflash: I’m selfish. It’s one of my many vices. Selfish, sick, lustful, a manipulative liar.”

“Harry, please don’t.”

Ignoring him, Harry turns his head to whisper into Louis’ ear. “It was little things, at first,” he murmurs. “Lying to you about where your clothes were or what happened to the washing machine or why I didn’t do the shopping. Silly little things. You swallowed them all, and I _loved it._ Loved the way you trusted me, never doubted me for a second. You swallowed my lies like they were the most delicious thing you’d ever tasted, easily and readily, and I started wondering how much I could feed you. If I could make you sick, poison you. You were so easy to lie to. And when I lied, you were beautiful. Especially your eyes…the bluest blue, and when I lie, they always look bluer to me.”

“Stop it.”

“Then I lied about where I was, who I was with. Made it believable. Hung out with different friends, went to different places, never went out at all. You never doubted me for a second, Lou, that was what made it even more of a game. I went to all these lengths to make sure you’d never find me out, and you never even tried. You trusted me implicitly. It makes me feel sick to think about it, but at the same time, it gives me butterflies…I guess I’ve screwed that up now.”

“Don’t –”

“I was scared of the party,” says Harry, right in his ear. “I thought it would change us. I pretended it never existed. You looked right at me when I was on the phone to Liam, listening to him talk about it. That sent chills down my spine. It was incredible. Are you scared of me yet? Are you going to run away? The more brazenly I lie, the hotter it is. I’ve been lying to you for kicks, Lou, why don’t you run away?” He sounds frustrated, confused, almost  _angry._

“Is that what you want?” Louis’ voice cracks, fracturing like a broken mirror, and his throat burns like he’s swallowed those mirror shards and chased them down with a litre glass of bleach. His eyes are wet. “Do you want me to run away from you?”

“You know what I want? I want you to take my face in your hands, touch your forehead to mine, look me right in the eyes and run your hands through my hair and say ‘Baby, let me help you’. I want you to help me stop feeling like this. I want us to be able to look at each other and  _say_ ‘I love you’, because you know we’ll both mean it!” Harry is breathing heavily; he’s torn himself out of Louis’ arms and they’re standing far apart, Harry’s fists clenched by his sides, Louis staring with wide eyes at him. They’re clearly having a fight; on the other side of the room, Liam hastily turns up the music to mask the sounds of their argument, although it is relatively quiet thus far. The other partygoers have the politeness to pretend not to notice that the clingiest couple in the room have suddenly turned on each other, but Harry’s face still burns with embarrassment at the thought of what they’ll say when he and Louis are gone, and Liam isn’t listening. His eyes burn even more, with tears he is fighting to hold back. “I’ve always been afraid to say those words because when I was younger, I said them and I didn’t mean them, and since then I’ve always been frightened to give them away. Don’t you understand? We spend every second together, we do everything together, even when I’m not with you it feels like I am because you’re always there at the back of my mind! I’ve always been afraid to say it because that’s one lie too big, one lie I don’t want to tell, and I never wanted to say it if I didn’t mean it, but when I think of you, how could I not? I  _love_ you, Louis.”

_He said it._

Louis is shell-shocked. It feels like he’s been plunged into a pool of water that surrounds him and drags him down and burns his skin, a relentless, dull burn like he’s slowly being barbequed. Just three little words. Five vowels, three consonants, three syllables, eight letters, and all the meaning in the world. He’d never expected anyone other than his mum to say them to him so earnestly, so honestly, with such wide eyes, peeling back all their layers and admitting something to him this big. Forget all of the dishonesty Harry has just admitted to; he’s just been so blindingly truthful in that rapidly fading moment that Louis isn’t sure how to handle it.

Lonely girls cry themselves to sleep at night because they are so desperate to hear those words from someone. Old people slip away in their sleep after telling their husbands or children or wives those words. Middle-aged women feel young again after hearing them, mothers and fathers whisper them to their children when they watch them sleep at night. People die for those words and because of those words, and a boy with green eyes and curly hair who meant more to him than he could admit without scaring himself has just looked him straight in the eyes and said them, and meant every little bit.

He hadn’t expected them to sound quite like that. His brain obligingly plays them over and over again, sending whispers of heat rushing down his spine. He snatches at the mindless details; the little pop Harry’s lips had made when he closed his mouth and sealed them together after he’d blurted his confession out; the incredible shining of his ivy eyes; the husky tone of his voice; his little intake of breath just before he took the plunge and said them, the reddening of his pale cheeks as he’d said those three magic words that have the potential to bind them together for good. They feel like a contract that will seize him and never let him go, as if he could ever or would ever escape anyway.

They feel like a trap. He can feel them wrapping around him, binding his hands together, knotting his legs to each other by the ankles, tying him to a chair and twining around him, unbreakable, unbearably tight, a boa constrictor made of letters that coils around his throat and slowly, slowly constricts until it’s strangling him, cutting off his airways, turning the world black, he’s panicking and he can’t breathe and he can feel Harry’s cool fingers resting gently on his wrist, hear him softly saying “Louis. Louis? Louis, Louis,” over and over again, not even expecting a response, just for the sake of saying it. Harry’s touch is gentle and as Louis stares numbly at where those long, pale fingers rest on his arm, he realizes that he wasn’t the only one who had the bright idea of spiking Liam’s vile non-alcoholic punch and it seems like someone else put something rather a lot stronger than brandy in – either that, or mixing your drinks really is as potent as he’s heard and he’s about to die from alcohol poisoning but first he’s having an epiphany.

He is  _so_ drunk. There’ll be hell to pay for this in the morning.

Harry is looking at him hopefully, and Louis is totally horror-struck, because there’s pure, unabashed adoration in his eyes; he’s just given Louis all there is to give with words other than wedding vows, and he looks so unbelievably happy that he’s done it, as if a weight has been lifted off his chest that’s been slowly crushing him for weeks; he’s just committed to Louis and told him exactly how he feels, laid himself open for Louis to examine his insides. Right now, he could just reach inside Harry’s chest and tear out his heart and do what he liked with it; he could throw it into the air or stamp on it or feed it into a paper shredder; he could scrape it to bloody pieces with a cheese grater or flatten it and feed it into a typewriter and type whatever silly words he likes onto it in ink made of his own pure terror, or whatever liquid form terror takes (probably sweat); he could  _eat_ it with ketchup, and he gets the feeling that Harry would watch him do it and still look at him in the exact same way afterwards, like his only purpose in life is to stare at Louis like he’ll never see him again if he dares to close his eyes for even a second. It’s the scariest thing Louis has ever seen in his life, because a part of him has to admit that he feels the exact same way, that Harry’s scarily intense feelings for him are one hundred percent reciprocated and Harry is his world, his galaxy, his whole  _universe,_ but the rest of him has a question that won’t be ignored: who is he, really?

A curly haired stranger with eyes the colour of seaweed floating in a rock pool and skin the colour of moonlight. He likes jam on his toast, exactly two spoonfuls. His tea always has far too much sugar in it, and he doesn’t like it really, but he refuses to make it any other way. If you tease him for long enough and then kiss the inside of his thighs with as much pressure as a butterfly landing on a flower would make, it can reduce him to tears and he’ll grab two handfuls of your hair and practically tear it out at the roots in desperation. He loves his mum and his sister and he isn’t afraid to be a mummy’s boy. When he cooks, he likes to wear a stripey apron. He can eat eight doughnuts in a row and catches them all in his mouth, and expects applause afterwards. He cries at every single movie in existence if there’s a sad part, no matter what it is (for the first few weeks of their relationship, he tried to hide that fact from Louis, but after the first two months or so he just let his tears flow unhindered and Louis mopped them up and pretended he didn’t find it cute). The noise he makes in the morning when the alarm goes off and he realizes he has to get out of bed is quite possibly the sexiest sound in the world; a groggy, sleepy groan that makes the hairs on the back of Louis’ neck stand on end and gives him goose-bumps every time. If he wakes up in the middle of the night he’ll roll over and snuggle into Louis’ side because he kind of hates the dark, but shhhh, it’s a secret. Sometimes he likes to read, and he doesn’t need glasses but he likes to wear them when he’s reading and Louis wouldn’t dream of stopping him, because it’s hot. He has a kink for being dominant, but he’ll just as eagerly surrender himself completely and let Louis wipe the floor with him. Louis could give you a perfect set-list of all the songs Harry likes to sing in the shower; he could list his star sign and birthday and favourite songs and colours and bands like magical incantations without making a single mistake, as devoted to memorizing them as a teenage girl memorizing trivia about her favourite band. He never forgets a thing. He could tell you the password to Harry’s laptop and phone and ipod and his locker combination at college and his favourite things in all the world, from his favourite smell to his favourite book. He could tell you what Harry likes to wear when they’re having a lazy day, what’s his preferred brand of shampoo, what’s his favourite food, what he likes to be called when they’re lying together on the bed with no clothes on and Louis is wearily running his hands through Harry’s sweaty curls, they’re tired and their bodies ache because they were too vigorous and they’re both already coming up in livid scratches and bruises because they don’t know how to be careful with each other. He knows the secrets Harry whispers to him when no one else’s ears are listening, things he  _could_ tell you but never would, because Harry trusted him with them and that means he’ll take them not only to the grave but to whatever comes after, and come hell or high water no one will force them out of him. Louis knows better than anyone who Harry is, but at the end of the day, he doesn’t know him at all, certainly not enough to say those three huge words that terrify him like nothing else.

His mouth falls open to say his own magic incantation, a string of words that will send Harry running, will crumple his face and fill his eyes with magic moisture. When they dry out, the salt on his face will protect him from his demons, so perhaps Louis ought to cry too, because he’s sure he has far more of them that he needs shielding from. The words fly out and they hit Harry like a punch to the stomach, no, a stab – then they bounce back and smack Louis in the gut too, but it’s far too late to snatch them back out of the air, to force them back down his throat and swallow them and glue them to his intestines and keep them hidden, his dirty shameful secret.

It’s too late to swap them for something sweet and simple, something true, something like “I love you too.” That’s what he should say, what he  _wants_ to say, which typically only dawns on him once he’s said something else. That something else happens to be pretty much the most awful thing he could have said ever.

“His name was Niall.”

The pause that stretches between them is filled with confusion, and he watches Harry’s gorgeous green eyes narrow and spares a moment to silently ask God who on earth had the bright idea of giving him, Louis Tomlinson, a mouth.

“What?”

“His name was Niall.”

“Whose name was Niall?”

Louis just looks at him and says nothing at all.

All of a sudden Harry takes a sharp intake of breath, his lips turning white and his eyes filling with pain. He stares at Louis like he’s really seeing him for the first time and he hates what he sees. He’s shaking, and Louis doesn’t know if he’ll be capable of catching Harry if he faints. But Harry has always been obstinate, and he has his pride, and his legs are not going to let him collapse unless he lets them.

It looks like Harry wants him to continue; his clenched fists are so tight that the skin is straining snowy white over his knuckles, and he looks like he might punch Louis in the face, but Louis kind of wishes he would. He deserves it. He believes so completely that he deserves a good punch that he digs in a little deeper, is a little bit more vicious. “He had blond hair and bluish-green eyes, and the green is in spirals around the iris, like when you swirl green food colouring into a bowl of blue to mix it in. He was wearing a shirt the same as one of yours. He was tall and skinny and he blushed from the moment I clapped eyes on him.”

Harry is breathing in so heavily and so raggedly that Louis almost thinks he might have gone into cardiac arrest, but when he looks very closely he thinks he can still see a pulse jumping in Harry’s neck, fighting to burst out of the skin. Every inch of his face has gone pure white, like newly made paper, and the tension rippling through his body threatens to break at any second and send him hurling himself across the room to strangle Louis. The look on his face is an awful cross between fury and pain, and his eyes sing the saddest song in the world as they stare straight at Louis, dry for pretty much the first time tonight. The heat of his anger has dried his tears.

“The next one was Zayn,” Louis tells him in a whisper. He knows he should stop, he’s hurt Harry enough, but he needs to hurt too, and just seeing Harry breaking apart is not hurting him enough even though he knows it really, really should. He needs someone to hit him, send him crashing to the ground, tear his head off his shoulders and paint filthy words and dark insults all over the walls of his old room at home with his blood. “I don’t know if he counts, really, although if we’re going off thought crime then I guess he probably does. I called him and we were going to meet up in a hotel room and have sex. I didn’t tell him about you. I knew he would never have agreed to it if I had. He’s a better person than I am. I was gagging for it.”

All of a sudden, Harry’s eyes are wet again, and a tear falls, rolling down his cheek in a perfectly straight line, dropping onto his collarbone and vanishing down inside his shirt. No more tears follow it, but Louis thinks if he could reach out and capture that one tear and lick it off his finger then maybe the taste of Harry’s pain would poison him, maybe what he’s done to the most incredible curly-haired boy in the world would shrivel his lungs into crumpled paper bags and tie his intestines in double knots and squeeze all of his internal organs into a meat grinder to be made into Louis-sausages. Maybe someone will feed them to a pig, but then again, that probably isn’t fair on the pig. It would probably be sick.

“He’s tall, too,” says Louis quietly. “He has skin the colour of caramel and his tattoos contrast really well with it. His eyes are brown and warm like melted chocolate and you feel like you could leap into them and drown. When he smiles, everyone in the room throws themselves at his feet. I was going to kiss his neck and lick his collarbones, I was going  to rip his shirt off and run my hands down his stomach and my nails down his back, I was going to suck love-bites into his hips and the inside of his thighs and I was going to make him  _scream_  –”

His neck makes a horrible snapping sound as his head jerks harshly to the left, the impact of skin on skin echoing throughout the room; not even the music can drown it out. His right cheek throbs from the moment Harry’s long hand makes contact with it. The force of the slap makes Louis stagger; Harry is far stronger than he lets on. It knocks white spots into Louis’ vision and sends coloured lights bursting through his head, and when he rights himself (no easy feat, he’s stupidly, ridiculously drunk) his cheek burns and the heat of it is travelling through the rest of his face, down his neck, filling his whole body. He gasps slightly, winces, flexes his jaw, and then cups his own aching cheek in one hand.

Staring right at him, Harry is quivering all over, and more tears have joined the first, threatening to become a flood. He’s still white and cold, like he’s sculpted out of ice, and he looks so heartbreakingly beautiful that Louis thinks he might empty the contents of his stomach all over the floor. He starts crying himself, not out of self-pity but from regret for what he has done to Harry, and he wraps his arms around himself like he’s trying to hold himself together.

Dazedly, Harry shakes his head like there’s water in his ears and he’s trying to clear them. Eyes glued to the floor, he makes a tiny sound that resembles a low sob, but is too quiet for anyone else but Louis to hear. Then his head lifts, his expression blanks out until his face could be made from stone (and his complexion also has tendencies towards that, too; he’s gone from white to ashen grey) and he stalks past Louis and out of the room, fists still clenched, leaving nothing behind him but a crowd of shocked onlookers and a searing white handprint on Louis’ bright red face.

The music keeps playing. The world tips to one side and Louis slowly, almost dreamily falls with it, crumpling to the floor like a paper doll. His hip hits the ground first with a horrible crunch, then his ribs, then his bum, which really ought to cushion his fall far more than it does, and then his head smacks into the cold concrete floor and stuns him, knocking the breath out of him far more than the blow to his ribs. For a moment or so, he lies there, the cold floor soothing his white-hot, burning cheek, his vision turning black and shimmery around the edges. Unconsciousness calls to him and he thinks he’d gladly accept it, but all of a sudden there are people swarming around him, Liam is by his side, rolling him onto his stomach for some bizarre reason and rubbing his back, and Louis chokes and lets out a low, wavering moan. Several hot tears spatter onto the floor, and they glisten like shards of broken glass.

~*~

How dare he?

Who does he think he is? How could he stand there like that and rattle off details of names and faces of the people he’s fucked or was planning to fuck, when he knew Harry was at home, waiting for him? Why did he think it was okay to say all of that about a blond called Niall and a brunette called Zayn, didn’t he realize how much it would  _hurt_? Those names have rent Harry in two; he can feel them burning like a pair of knives buried in his gut, and every time he moves they twinge viciously so he thinks he might scream out loud. His own tears are so hot that they’re scalding him.

He doesn’t want to remember all the gory details he was so cruelly supplied with, but they’re circulating around his brain on repeat, taunting him, ripping him open and sewing him back together again with ugly black thread just so that they can have the pleasure of tearing apart the stitches.  _Blond brunette blue eyes brown eyes pink cheeks caramel skin m a k e h i m s c r e a m._

The door he’s just blindly hurled himself at for the third or fourth time finally bursts open, and he slams it behind him. He wants to drop to his knees but his legs are determined he’s not going to fall, so he starts pacing manically around the room with his eyes closed, miraculously not bumping into anything. It feels like he’s on a carousel and he can’t get off; he’s whirling around and around and he feels like he might throw up and instead of tinkling music playing in the background there’s a chorus of those two names and their descriptions and Louis’ voice talking about all the things he’d wanted to do to the guy called Zayn, and Harry wonders if maybe he didn’t bother elaborating on Niall because he’d actually carried those plans out rather than just intending to.

Pain spikes through his knuckles as he punches the wall yet again. How long has he been stood here screaming and ramming his hand into a brick wall and imagining it’s Louis’ nose? His whole hand is aching and all the skin has come off his knuckles, leaving them a raw, bloody mess, and he steps back with a little gasp and buries his face in his hands.

“I love you,” he sobs. “I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I  _love you_!” The fact that he loves him only makes it worse, makes it hurt more, especially because he said it out loud and Louis still told him all of those awful things anyway. Only two names, but he wishes there were more, because then they’d be harder to remember. No, of course he doesn’t wish there were more, what is he saying? He’s crying so hard he can’t breathe, still chanting desperately with tears in his eyes but he can’t get the words out now, so all that comes out is “I – I – I lo-lo – I love – I – I –” With another scream, he whirls around and smacks the wall again, pummels it with his fists, even kicks it, but it doesn’t make him feel any better.

He could do it for real. Lash out and punch Louis in the stomach, slap him again, rip his hair out at the roots, kick him in the teeth, leap up and down on top of his bloodied, broken body and leave him a pile of bruises and broken bones pointing through the skin. Oh, he could do it, but he never would, because he loves him, and he’d rather do all of those things to himself than lay a finger on Louis. The slap took him by surprise; he never thought he had it in him, but clearly he does, and he may be astonished but he’s still regretful and part of him would do anything to take that slap back and soothe Louis’ cheek better with gentle kisses and soft words and hold him all night until everything is better.

Of course, the other part of him wants to beat Louis to death with the nearest blunt instrument, but fortunately the part that loves him irrevocably would never ever let him do that.

“Harry?”

His head jerks, snapping up, his vision too blurred with wetness for him to make out any distinguishing features, but he knows it isn’t Louis. The voice is wrong for that. Whoever it is sounds kind and concerned, but in the nicest way possible, he wants to ram their concern so far down their throat that it comes out the other end.

Not-Louis advances on him, not seeming in the least bit daunted by the mess that she’s confronted with. Her hand lays on his arm, comfortingly substantial, and Harry only realizes how badly he’s shaking when he feels a steady hand touching him, reminding him how it feels not to be shuddering so hard you’re in danger of shaking yourself to pieces. Not-Louis starts murmuring something to him, but he isn’t listening. Not-Louis guides him to a chair and sits him down and thrusts a delicate white handkerchief into his hands, and who carries a handkerchief around, really? Bitterly, he wipes his eyes with it, wanting to be able to see who they are and look them in the eyes when he snaps at them to go away and leave him alone and let his heart break in peace.

Danielle stares solemnly back at him. She looks pretty tonight (not that she doesn’t ordinarily, but she’s clearly made an extra effort). Her hair is elaborately styled, her make-up flawless and not even slightly smudged, her skin clear, and she has a worried, almost maternal look plastered across her face that is so sweet that it’s more beautiful than any of the rest of her. Her arms go around him and pull him into a hug and he sobs against her shoulder for a while.

Harry isn’t used to cuddles. The only person he’s ever really cuddled is Louis, which is why it’s almost instinctive when he tilts his head and kisses her hard on the mouth. Honestly, he’s not really sure why he does it, but he has a vague idea that it will hurt Louis and that she’s a beautiful girl and it might make him feel better, although she’ll probably be disgusted because his face is soaked with tears and his nose is running and he’s a disgusting mess.

The kiss shocks her, and it takes a few seconds before she starts pushing him away, saying firmly “Harry, stop it, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

He knows exactly what he’s doing. Her lips don’t taste right and her shoulders aren’t broad enough and her hair is too long, she isn’t  _Louis_ , but she’s warm and she’s a distraction so he leans in a little further, tries to kiss her more insistently, and she’s having none of it. When he tries to get a decent grip on her waist so she can’t pull away from him, she gives him an enormous shove that sends him staggering, and he almost falls over.

“Harry!” she shouts. “Look at yourself for just one second! You’re a mess! You don’t really want to kiss me, and no offence, but I don’t particularly want to kiss you either, so I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing. For God’s sake, pull yourself together!”

“He cheated on me!” screams Harry. “I told him I loved him, I gave him the words I’ve always been too scared to say to anyone, and do you know how he repaid me? He gave me a list of names and facial features and told me exactly what he wanted to do to them! Do you have _any_ idea how that feels? No, you don’t, because Liam loves you and you’re not trapped in an obsessive, dysfunctional relationship that’s going in only one direction, and that’s backwards!”

“How is kissing me going to make any difference to that, Harry? You and Louis made this mess, and you and Louis need to fix it. Don’t go making the situation worse.” Her sharp tone softens a little. “Liam’s giving Lou a bed for the night so you can go home, but if you’d rather not go back there then I can always ask Marina if she’ll let you spend the night at hers. I wouldn’t advise that you try to kiss  _her_ , though, her boyfriend’s a bit fierce.”

Harry  _almost_ laughs, but it sounds far too much like a sob.

“I’ll go home. I just need…to go home.”

“Okay,” she says softly, comfortingly rubbing his back. “You’re in no fit state to drive. I’ll call you a taxi.”

“I’m sorry!” Harry cries, burying his face in her shoulder again. “I don’t know why I did that. God, I don’t know why the hell I did that. I’m so sorry. I’m…I’m  _sorry_.”

She squeezes his shoulder. “You’re hurting. People in pain will do anything to try and make it go away. It’s not the first time someone who’s bawling their eyes out has come on to me and it won’t be the last,” she says dryly, “no harm done. Just don’t tell Liam. He’s as sweet as pie under normal circumstances, but if he finds out you planted one on me then he’ll kill you.”

No harm done? There’s been plenty of harm done. And Harry doesn’t think it’s fixable.


	9. Chapter 9

Once upon a time, when Harry used to get drunk regularly but wasn’t very good at holding it, when he used to drink himself into oblivion and stagger into the street and fall over and laugh at himself afterwards, he fell a little too hard in a rather nasty part of town, and he landed on a pile of broken glass. He remembers staring stupidly at his palm, with a huge chunk of his hand hanging off by a thread of skin and blood pulsing wetly out of it and dripping disgustingly onto his jeans, down his wrist, onto the floor. He remembers screaming and screaming until someone came and wrapped him in a thick blanket and said in faraway words that he’d gone into shock, and he remembers not being able to feel anything. They called an ambulance and took him to hospital, and the next thing he felt was liquid trickling into his veins, through his arm, a numbing drug. He expected to feel heavy afterwards, weighed down like a lead balloon – reality was that he felt lighter than air. He couldn’t feel any of his limbs, could barely hear a word or see a thing; eventually he just stared blankly into space and wondered what exactly was weighing him down, pulling him to the floor, keeping him from floating up to the ceiling and floating out of the window, because he couldn’t feel anything that was holding him down and his body felt like it wasn’t even there, like he had no corporeal form left, like he was an empty shell and the moment it dawned on gravity that he weighed as much as an oxygen particle he would be up and away, free, separated into millions of atoms, a paper shell that tore apart until nothing was left, and he’d fly away into nothing. He knew what nothing felt like, now.

(Okay, so he was in shock and probably high on whatever the hell kind of drug they gave him, but whatever.)

This feels nothing like that.

He’s sure it’s supposed to feel numb, he’s supposed to feel dead and empty and sick, like a hollow shell waiting to be filled with anger and pain and confusion that’ll come crashing down on him like a brick wall the moment it hits home that he and Louis have pretty much broken up – but he’s never conformed to other people’s ideas of how he is supposed to be, what he is supposed to say, how he is supposed to feel, and now is no exception.

He wonders what it would have felt like if he hadn’t gone into shock that time. If he’d looked down at his hand, felt the pain, then picked up a handful of glass shards from the floor and expressionlessly shoved them into the open wound. Forced them in deeper, deeper, until his hand was crammed full of glass splinters. Locked in his screams and watched with glittering eyes as his hand filled with icicles that provoked sparks of pain like his whole arm was a live wire. He can imagine pretty well what that feels like, except he can feel the glass shards burying themselves in a different part of his body and wriggling all the time, burrowing in deeper.

It isn’t in his chest, either, yet another example of how he is different to other people. It’s somewhere deep inside his stomach, clawing him apart from the inside with claws made of shadows, and as it does so, it sings the list of Louis’ words that destroyed him, accompanied by a backing track chant of “Niall and Zayn, Niall and Zayn, Niall and Zayn.” Harry hates these strangers more than he used to think it was possible to hate anyone. He hates them so much that he’d happily tear them limb from limb with nothing but his teeth, slice them into shreds with only a cheese grater, gouge them to pieces with a piece of blunt metal. It would take a long time, but if he ever saw them on the street, he’d do it. Not that he know what they look like, of course.

That’s the hardest part, he thinks. Going outside and looking into the eyes of any old blond stranger and wondering if Louis pinned them against the wall and had sex with them then and there. Spotting a brown-eyed boy and wondering if he’d called Louis and planned to hook up. Knowing that two sets of strangers’ fingerprints have been seared into Louis’ skin for good, left no physical mark but left memories behind them…the very thought makes him hiss with anger.

He spent last night on Liam’s couch, and now he’s home, standing in front of the door to his flat with the key hovering millimetres over the lock, waiting for him to let himself in, but he isn’t sure he wants to. The truth is, he doesn’t want to walk in there and see all of Louis’ stuff just sitting there in the exact same place he left it, like nothing has changed at all. If he’s honest with himself, he doesn’t want any of Louis’ stuff moved, either, because the flat would look so  _wrong_ without it, like half Harry’s life was missing. In fact, the easiest solution would probably be to remove everything, from his CD collection to the units built into the walls, rip everything out and hurl it into the street, draw all the curtains and lock all the doors and sit in the middle of the living room without any stuff in it and then the whole flat would be dark and empty, just like him.

Taking a deep breath, Harry lets himself in. It’s not as bad as he expected – at least none of Louis’ stuff starts screeching “HAHAHAHA HE’S GONE!” at him, which is half what he expected. It makes him feel far more numb seeing things of Louis’ still hanging around as if nothing has changed, as if Louis hasn’t ripped enormous chunks of Harry’s heart out and lit them on fire like ceremonial candles. One of Louis’ shirts is on the floor, dirty, and Harry picks it up and buries his nose in it and breathes in that incredible Louis smell, and all of a sudden he’s fighting back tears. How humiliating. At least, thank goodness for small mercies, there’s no one here to see him reduced to tears by a shirt with spaghetti bolognaise stained dramatically down the front of it –

A clatter and a low jumble of swearwords breaks the silence, and Harry jumps out of his skin. It takes a couple of seconds for his brain to register that there is someone else in his house, and once that’s sunk in he realizes he should probably be horrified or something, but really, the idea of a burglar coming in to steal all his possessions is incredibly appealing right now, because an empty house is what he wants most in the entire world, so he drops the shirt and heads towards the direction of the cursing, not to apprehend the robber, but to offer his assistance in helping him cart out as much of Harry’s stuff as he can, and Louis’, too. Maybe he can call a removal company or something, get them to send a van. They’ll have to send a lot of vans if they’re going to fit Harry’s whole life in them, but he doesn’t mind paying a bit extra. He laughs quietly to himself and then lightly pushes the bedroom door and walks right in.

Louis is standing helplessly over the remains of an ugly vase that Harry is pretty sure came free with the flat and has always hated, but been afraid to throw away in case it was given to him by a diseased elderly relative or something. He’s the last person Harry expected to see here, although it makes sense, really, because he  _does_ live here and he  _does_  have a key, so it probably shouldn’t come as quite such a shock. As Harry steps into the room, he looks up and despairingly holds up his hands.

“I’ll pay for it,” he says guiltily, and then looks like he wishes he hadn’t. “Was it expensive?”

For a moment, Harry forgets that he hates him and he wants to beat him to death with the closest object to hand, and instantly switches into teasing mode. “Oh, yes,” he says seriously, completely deadpan, “very. It was a collectors’ item. We’re talking thousands.”

In abject horror, Louis casts what’s left of the broken pottery an appalled look, and then Harry’s mouth twitches and all of a sudden he starts laughing, so Louis joins in, and then there they are, the two of them both bent double, convulsing with helpless laughter over the remains of a poor broken vase that neither of them ever liked. It feels good to laugh properly at something which doesn’t happen to be the irony of how shit his life is right now, so Harry doesn’t stop until his ribs are aching and he’s got stomach cramps and the laughter is literally starting to hurt, and then his emotions don’t seem to get the memo that he just wants to switch off the giggles, not swing from euphoria to deep depression in a matter of seconds, because he starts sobbing uncontrollably, and he didn’t think it was possible, but Louis looks even more horrified than he did at the prospect of owing Harry thousands of pounds for a hideous vase.

“Oh, my God, Harry –”

He goes in for a hug, and Harry begins by trying to push him away and ends up pulling him in tighter, and all of a sudden they’re trying to squash each other in the tightest grip known to man. Harry’s fingers slide up into Louis’ hair and pull far too hard, but not all of it is for malicious reasons; having Louis so close to him is seriously screwing with his head. His body wants one thing (sex; it’s come to expect it from Louis on a regular basis) and the rest of him wants another (to commit a brutal, bloody and intensely satisfying murder). Oh, and oops, he’s bawling his eyes out all over Louis’ shoulder, and all he can hope for after quite so spectacularly losing his dignity and pretty much giving up for dead is that Louis feels bloody well guilty seeing him get into quite so much of a state.

“You arsehole,” sobs Harry, “you complete and utter arsehole! Dumbfuck, titwanker, bastard, bitch, fucking slut! I hate you I hate you I hate you I  _hate you I hate you I hate you so much_  –”

An outpouring of insults, imaginative, unimaginative and downright obscene follows this little outburst, and mercifully Louis doesn’t even think about interrupting, he just listens to it all while Harry cries all over him and soaks up every single foul name like a sponge, waiting patiently for Harry to get it all out of his system. When Harry is as angry as this, he can see it taking a while, but he doesn’t so much as murmur a word of complaint, even when Harry starts raking his nails down his chest and leaving deep red scratches hidden underneath his shirt, or when he bites him viciously on the neck in a cruel parody of a love-bite, except there is nothing loving about this. The thing is that Louis knows he deserves it, so he just waits and waits for all of it to finish bursting out so that they can finally, finally talk.

Eventually, Harry pushes him away a little bit, allowing him to leave one arm draped around Harry’s waist but no more contact than that, wipes his eyes, sniffs woefully and nods jerkily, as if to say, ‘That’s it.’ For a few more seconds, Louis waits, just to make sure, but then he closes his eyes and leans in and kisses Harry carefully on the mouth, like he’s scared to break him or something.

The kiss burns in Harry’s lips and that heat sears through him and dances through every inch of his body, and he can’t decide if it’s lust or another feeling entirely, because he doesn’t recognize it at all. It’s not a long kiss, all things considered, and when Louis lets him go Harry instantly starts craving more, as if Louis is some kind of illegal substance and he has a dependency for him, a need to have him close. It wouldn’t surprise him if he honestly was addicted to the taste of Louis’ lips, but he’s still angry and if he starts coming over all needy and begging for more kisses, he might as well bury what’s left of his dignity (not that the remains are worth much) and have done with it. So he presses his now aching lips together and fixes Louis with a  _look._

He isn’t sure how many words he can string together into a coherent sentence without bursting into tears again, or at least without his voice going all wobbly and embarrassing, so he decides to stick to short sentences. “Was it worth it?”

“No.”

Harry looks into Louis’ eyes, and he honestly believes that.

“Why did you do it?”

It takes a sharp intake of breath and a couple of very long seconds for Louis to steady his nerve, but by the time he’s done it, it’s well worth the wait. “Because I do love you,” he tells Harry unabashedly, “and I was afraid to admit it, because I’ve never felt this way before about anyone. When we were together, I could think about us. When I was alone, it was still all I thought about, but there were questions running through my mind that I didn’t want to answer, and the only way to shut them up was by…” He shakes his head and buries his face in his hands. “It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life, no contest.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Harry says wryly. “I’d say the stupidest thing you’ve ever done is approach me at that party and get involved with me in the first place. I’m not good for you, Louis. I’m not good for anyone.”

“Harry, I’m a cheating, drinking train wreck and you’re a pathological liar. Neither of us are good for each other. But do you really think we have any choice in this anymore? Because God, it scares me, but I love you, and I can’t think of anything I’d rather do less than turn my back on you right now – or ever.”

“You hurt me.”

“I hurt myself too. I hurt both of us the moment I rammed that blond kid up against the wall, Harry, but I’ve slapped a bandage over that wound and I won’t be peeling it off, because I can’t do this anymore. I’m sick of running away from myself. There’s something not right in my head and I want to fix it. I’ve got myself a therapist, I’m figuring things out. The first step to fixing something is admitting it’s broken, and now I’ve done that, it won’t be easy, but I’ve set things in motion.”

And Harry closes his eyes, because he loves him, and he hates him a little bit, because he’s the cheating scumbag who made him do something he swore he’d never do over a man: cry, because he’d never intended to unlock the chains from around his heart and happily hand it over on a silver platter. He’s watched Louis hold that heart in his gentle hands, then put it through a meat-grinder and turn it into ribbons, then dip it in acid and tie it in unwieldy knots and stamp on it, then cram it back into Harry’s chest as if he expects it to still be beating. And it is. There were a few irregular beats, in fact, he wasn’t sure he could hold it together, but somehow it kept struggling on, and now it’s healing already, thumping erratically in his chest at Louis’ words, even though it’s a battered and bloody mess. Maybe, if Louis is serious about this, they can bring it out again and smooth out the creases and unravel the knots, and maybe it’ll stop hurting so much. It’s working in perfect order, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t still  _ache._

Harry wishes he’d never clapped eyes on him, he really does – it hurts too much, all of it, he can barely breathe sometimes even when they are at their best, because Louis is a candle that burns at both ends; no matter which end you hold, you get burned. On his good side, he burns you because he is too beautiful, too brilliant, too much of an incredible human being and all you can do is hold on to him for dear life and never let this opportunity go. On his bad side, he burns you because he is too beautiful, too brilliant, and everybody wants him and Louis has proved that he is too eager to share himself, when Harry is like a selfish child with a favourite toy and doesn’t want to share with anyone. Harry’s fingers are blistered and burnt, but he’s still holding on to that candle with everything he’s got.

But Louis sometimes refuses to eat tea because he doesn’t  _want_ tea, he doesn’t want normal boring food, he wants ice cream, and he stubbornly won’t let a crumb of anything past his lips until Harry sighs and goes into the freezer and gets them each a huge tub of ice cream, and they have that for tea instead. Louis wakes up at 3am and puts on rock music from the 80s and starts fiddling with the electrics so the dodgy lighting starts flickering and he can pretend he’s in a club (one time when he was spectacularly drunk he tried to overcook toast and set bread on fire in lieu of a smoke machine; Harry had to firmly tell him to put the vodka down and escort him to bed that time). Louis watched Harry get a particularly vile plant from Liam for his birthday, and proceeded to get drunk and throw up all over it, thus killing it, so that Harry wouldn’t have to suffer through having to water it and keep it alive even though it was the most hideous botanical specimen he’d ever seen in his life. Louis sings children’s TV show theme songs in the shower and insists upon having a rubber ducky even though they don’t have a bath. Louis answers the phone to telemarketers by pretending to work for the same company and making out he’s the caller’s work colleague. Louis is the most incredible idiot Harry has ever met.

Harry looks at him long and hard and then he walks forward on tiptoe and kisses Louis carefully on the cheek. He isn’t entirely sure why he does it, but it seems to have some kind of effect on Louis: his eyes widen and his lips part, and his hand covers the spot that Harry’s lips grazed as if he can hold the kiss against his skin.

“I want to change this,” says Harry. “I want to change  _me._ I’m tired of who I am.”

“I’m not,” is Louis’ response. “I love you how you are. But there are things we need to work on, for our own sanity, and Harry, I can work on this. I want to make things okay again, and we can help each other, okay?”

Harry hugs him – properly  _hugs_ him, and when was the last time they did  _that_ , with Harry’s curly head resting on his shoulder even though he’s taller and his arms wrapped so tightly around Louis that he can hold his own forearms on the other side, inhaling the smell of Louis’ jumper and snuggling in as closely as he can get? In fact, have they  _ever_ held each other like this? If they have, Louis doesn’t remember it, and surely he would never forget  _this._

Harry needn’t have blurted out that clumsy “I love you” at the party those few nights before. If he’d just hugged Louis like this, then Louis would already have known.

“Okay,” Harry agrees, and it feels like he’s said far more than that, because his face is still buried in Louis’ neck.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm terrible at endings.

“Is something burning in there, babe?” calls Louis, poking his head around the kitchen door and peering worriedly at the oven.

Harry turns around and rolls his eyes at him. He’s wearing a navy apron with white stripes on it, and it looks cute on him. His hair is a dishevelled mess and he looks a little too warm, his cheeks pink, but Louis isn’t surprised; their small kitchen is like a sauna at the moment. It’s the thick steam pouring from underneath the door that worried him initially, but by the looks of it nothing appears to be on fire.

“Have a little faith in me. I’m not going to burn our house down. Lunch is almost ready, how’re you holding up out there? Keeping everyone entertained?”

“Of course. I know how to look after my own family, you know. Big brother – entertaining screeching children is in my job description. Seriously, are you holding up in here, because if you want I could –” He trails off and nervously picks up a stray saucepan, holding it like some kind of weapon and throwing it an apprehensive expression that makes Harry want to snort with laughter. He’s staring at the pan like it might suddenly leap out of his hand and attack him.

“You can stop right there, Jamie Oliver,” says Harry with a grin, “you know as well as I do that there’s no quicker way of setting the kitchen on fire than letting you loose inside it, so go and make sure your family aren’t wreaking havoc in our flat and leave the cooking to me, okay?”

Things are finally becoming  _normal_ , and Harry’s discovered that he actually likes being domesticated a whole lot more than he thought he would. Waking up in the morning with Louis by his side, and knowing that he doesn’t have to hide any lies – it feels so, so good. And Louis knows what it does to him, the lying, how it eats him up inside but oh, it feels so wonderful, and they’ve figured a way around that. Harry can tell as many lies as he likes while Louis fucks him into the mattress, so long as they separate the falsehoods from the truth afterwards. And Harry’s getting better at telling the truth now, anyway. The temptation to lie is weaker every day.

They’ve found Louis an outlet, too – he’s always been insatiable in his sex drive, but now he has a part time job volunteering at a local playgroup, and running round after so many little kids keeps him on his toes. It keeps him busy and exhausted, so some nights he doesn’t even _want_ to have sex, and on the nights when he does, one or two rounds and he’s out for the count. Their relationship is far healthier when it’s in moderation.

They like to watch DVDs and feed each other popcorn, and mimic all the lines. If it’s a scary film, Harry snuggles up against Louis, not because he’s scared, but because he thinks Louis might be, and he doesn’t want to embarrass him by bringing up the subject but he feels like maybe Louis needs a cuddle. They go out with their families, and Louis sometimes makes Harry sandwiches for lunch, because it’s the only cooking he can manage. They kiss each other goodnight and sometimes have baths together. It’s sweet and it’s easy and it works.

Harry might go to university; he isn’t really sure yet. He thinks he could do it, but he’s not so sure he wants to leave Louis. Part of him doesn’t completely trust Louis anymore; he’s been honest about that, and Louis understands. They’ve talked about maybe getting another flat together closer to where the university is that Harry wants to go to, so they don’t have to be separated. They both kind of like that idea.

They’ve been playing sick little games for too long, like a pair of twisted children, but they’ve decided to break all the rules – this way, they both win. 


End file.
